Ask general networking questions here.... home setups, relatively simple work configurations, that sort of thing.
Things we may need to know:
- What your goals are.
- Your budget.
- How much time you're willing to invest.
- If money or time are unusually important. It's quite common to be able to save a lot of cash if you're willing to put in some hours learning and configuring. Alternately, you can sometimes just buy a solution, if you don't want to think about it much.
- If applicable, what's not working now.
- How fast your external network connection is. This one is important for sizing hardware recommendations.
- Whether you're running (or planning to run) any internal services. If you know about things like DHCP, DNS, Samba, and Apache, talk in those terms. If not, talk about goals instead, and we can usually translate that into necessary services.
- If you're planning to share any of those services with the outside world.
- Your approximate skill level with computers in general, and Linux in particular. This applies back to the time/money tradeoff: Linux is often an extremely powerful and free solution to many network problems, but it takes time to learn and configure.
- If you have any strong brand or OS preferences we should know about.
Hi!
Thanks for creating this thread, Malor.
I just bought a couple of wireless routers for my house and a 16-port switch. Is there anything special I need to know to avoid conflicts etc, or can I simply plug these in? The switch will be in the basement, attached to my modem, then wired to other rooms throughout the house. The wiring is already setup (properly and professionally). I plan to have one wireless router in my living room on the main floor and another in my office space on the second floor.
Any advice is super appreciated.. and yes, I should have bought 5G routers, in retrospect, but I'm sure these will do just fine, as the wireless devices don't really need a lot of speed.
What router/firewall are you using now, and are you planning to replace it, or keep it?
And, yes, the 54GL is very old, and I would have suggested something newer.
Hmm, router is built into the modem from Rogers.
I can turn off the wireless that is built into the modem (Hitron CGN3ROG). I'm thinking since the modem is capable of 2.4G and 5G, and the other routers are 2.4G, I can leave the 5G running to serve the basement and that should not conflict with the 2.4G routers, right? I can turn both off independently.
Yeah I think that all fits with the bits I know, thanks a ton for explaining the different options.
The one bit you said banged off my working knowledge of routers though: you are saying I plug my other routers into a LAN port, not a WAN port. That's totally a novel concept to me, and is probably what's currently stopping me from configuring the device.
No, your first idea is what I wanted, but I'm having trouble configuring the two routers. I can get on the wireless portion easily if I am not physically connected to the device, but I can't figure out how to get into it to configure the wireless portion.
I guess that means at least one thing, the device cannot service ethernet, right?
Well, by default, each of the routers will come up with DHCP and DNS active, on their LAN ports. So you'll need to unplug your computer from your main network, plug it into one of those LAN port, and then browse to the admin utility. I don't know what the default address will be, but it should be listed in the manual.
In that admin utility, you'll need to turn off all the services, put it into bridge mode, and give it a (LAN!) IP address on your internal network, out of your DHCP range. If you put them up high in your network range (say, 192.168.0.251 and 252), that shouldn't conflict with anything. Once you save and reset the router, you'll have to plug back into the main network, and then plug a LAN port from that router into your switch. You should then be able to reach it on 192.168.0.251 or whatever you chose.
Then you'll have to repeat the process for the other router... bring it up entirely separately, configure it to slot into your main network, reboot, and connect it over there.
Ok, that's sort of what I tried, but didn't get anywhere. I'll have to pick this up Sunday evening, but I think you have provided enough to get me sorted.
Unfortunately, I am also still waiting for the switch to come in, so that may also be causing some issues.
Thanks so much for your detailed help!
Also if you can, set up the actual router to serve up a subset of the available IPs over DHCP. That leaves addresses you can use as static ones for network equipment and any servers.
For example...
My home network uses IPs in the 192.168.2.0 subnet with a mask of 255.255.255.0. That means 192.168.2.1 through 192.168.2.254 are available (255 is the broadcast address and left unused).
I set up DHCP to serve up the range 192.168.2.2 through 192.168.2.200. This means that 192.168.2.1 won't be served up (used by the router) and I have 54 other addresses (201-254) which I can manually assign to any devices which need them.
I think it's all making sense... too bad I have on time to work on it until Sunday evening.
You know, I was thinking about this a little this morning, and I think you would be very wise to take advantage of Amazon's generous return policy. That switch is fine, but the WRT54GL is absolutely ancient hardware, more than 13 years old. By modern standards, it's extremely slow. (to the point where my first version of that sentence included an expletive.) And they're still charging $70 for it, which just about knocked me out of my chair.
For $80 or so, you could get a refurb RT-N56U, which is pretty good kit. It's about ten times faster than the 54GL in terms of wired routing speed, somewhere around twice as fast with N wireless (the limit being the signal, more than the router), and it's got gigabit ports, so you don't have to screw with crossover cables. I think you'd be much better off with something like that.
Yeah, don't rub it in. I will have to limp along this way for a while, unfortunately, as I already opened them up, and my wife will skin me if she gets wise. However, I did not pay any $80 for them..
I might add something in a few months... what about this?
For $80 you can get TWO brand new Buffalo AirStation N600s and still have $10 in your pocket. (Buffalo has been having a fire sale on their routers because they're re-releasing them with DD-WRT preinstalled)
Personally, I have the AirStation 1750s, which are great if you're willing to drop $100 for a router. If you really want to spend some money, the Netgear Nighthawk is highly regarded for its signal strength. Unlike the Buffalo routers though, it can't be wall mounted.
I have no experience with TP-Link routers and so can't comment there, except to say that the price tag is unbelievably low for an 801.11 ac router.
Oddly enough, that's the same price at amazon.ca
For $80 you can get TWO brand new Buffalo AirStation N600s and still have $10 in your pocket. (Buffalo has been having a fire sale on their routers because they're re-releasing them with DD-WRT preinstalled)
Personally, I have the AirStation 1750s, which are great if you're willing to drop $100 for a router. If you really want to spend some money, the Netgear Nighthawk is highly regarded for its signal strength. Unlike the Buffalo routers though, it can't be wall mounted.
I have no experience with TP-Link routers and so can't comment there, except to say that the price tag is unbelievably low for an 801.11 ac router.
For wifi in general, there's a "three wall rule", which is that once the signal is going through three walls it's time to add a repeater or a new router. If you have a laptop, it may be worth walking around your house with something like InSSIDer running to check signal coverage in rooms you care about and experiment with router location. You can even do this without the routers wired to the internet, since you're just testing your ability to talk with the router itself. I know some people put routers in the attic to get around the wall penetration issue, but attics get so hot I've never tried it.
Ok, I bought two of those Buffalo AirStations. I am pretty sure I can return the other two to Newegg, they just want me to include all parts/manuals etc.
NewEgg is good about returns. It shouldn't be a problem.
Alright, I probably did it wrong, because I definitely am doing things differently than you outlined, but again, you gave me advice based on different products, so here goes.
The switch I plugged into the modem and disabled the 2.4G wireless portion of the modem. I then plugged one cable into the plug leading to my living room and another one into one of the cables leading to my office on the third floor. I plugged the cable from the switch into the WAN ports on my new Buffalo AirStations. I then was able to sign into each station and give them a static IP address, I used 192.168.0.254 and 192.168.0.255. I gave each wireless network its own unique SSID, and used the same password as I have on the Hitron (modem/router).
I noticed the AirStations have a switch that can be set to Auto, Bridge or Router, but I left both on Auto. I then decided to leave the cable plugged into the WAN port. I know you said to use a Bridge setting and plug into a LAN port, but things seem to be working well the way I have them setup.
Any reason I should switch them to Bridge and swap where the cable is plugged in, or was that specifically because the old routers would not know how to handle the connection otherwise?
Don't use IP 255. It's the broadcast address (used for messages that all of the machines on that subnet listen to) and should never be used by an actual machine. Using .0 or .255 can lead to weird issues. Stick with 1 through 254.
Also, don't use the WAN ports on the wireless access points. You don't want the wireless networks to be separate from (and inaccessible from) your wired network. Leave the WAN ports empty and plug ethernet into one of their LAN ports.
The wireless access points hopefully don't have DHCP enabled either. Leave that to your actual router.
Okay, for some reason now I can't connect to my AirStations to make changes
So it seems that when I successfully switched the airstation to IP 192.168.0.254, and switched it to bridge, I now cannot get onto the wireless network. When I sign into the router to make changes to the config, none of the buttons work. Do I have to have it in auto or router while I configure the wireless security settings, then switch it to bridge?
If they're still hooked up using the WAN ports, you can't get on the wireless network because your DHCP server is on a different physical network. It isn't receiving the request from your machine for an address, because that won't go through the WAN port.
Okay, I am running with the switch connected to my first airstation through LAN port 1 on the airstation. My laptop I am using to configure this router is connected through LAN port 4. The physical switch on the airstation is set to 'auto' and I assume it is acting as a router, because there is something in the settings called WDS which I cannot access while the airstation is in 'router' mode. When I switch the airstation to bridge mode, the wireless continues to function as does the wired connection, but I am unable to configure the airstation anymore.
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