Adding a second router?

[Lucas Brown]

Hi, I recently moved into a new house and need some help with networking. I am by no means an expert, so bear with me. At the center of our house is our Belkin Wireless N router, which for the most part works great, except in a few rooms at the far end of our house. One of these rooms is my "gaming" room, where my PS3, PC, and other devices reside. Since I need a strong connection for gaming on both my PC and PS3, I have been using a powerline adapter to connect them, as the wifi signal here is awful. However, there is a utility room that is right next to my gaming room, which contains our Comcast modem. The modem has only one ethernet port, which runs through the wall to our router in the center of the house. Since I also watch netflix/browse the internet on my other WiFi enabled devices in my gaming room, I would like a strong wifi signal in the room.

Reading around, I have gathered that it is possible to use another router as an "access point," and effectively cover a much larger area. I was thinking I could connect our Modem in the room next to my gaming room to another router, then connect that router to our main Belkin router, turing one of the two into an access point. How difficult would this be? Also, I have been eyeing some Linksys routers, specifically the e1500, e2000, and e2500, as they can be purchased for around the $25-$50 range refurbished on amazon. Is this the way to go? Could anyone recommend the best router in that price range? Also, I have heard I should get a router with gigabit ethernet ports. I would likely connect my PC and/or PS3 to ethernet via the new router I will be buying, so should I get a router with Gigabit ethernet ports? How does this whole setup sound? Suggestions?

Thanks

 

[dextermat]

Hi,
For gaming and streaming, you should go wired!

If you want to go wireless, I recommend this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833168091

I setup a wireless network at the motel with wired and wireless computers and it has to go outside the office and back into the rooms (the office is separated from the motel)

I got 2 of them and they are installed outside. 1 broke (they are not made to go outside) because it got extremely humid, but for the others they have been running fine for 3 years now and it is fairly easy to setup.
I have tried many brand, repeaters and this is the only one that worked well.
I pair asus router to engenius repeaters FTW!!

 

[Lucas Brown]

Thanks for the reply, however that repeater is out of my price range. I have looked into repeaters before, and people say they half the speed of the WiFi, and that there are better solutions, like setting up a router as an access point. Thanks anyways!

 

[flexxar]

You say "I would likely connect my PC and/or PS3 to ethernet via the new router". Does that mean you are connecting all of the devices in your game room to the router and will therefore not need wireless in the game room?

If so, all you need is a switch. It's a device that acts like a hub and has no routing function and no wireless. Connect the modem to the switch. Connect all the devices in your game room and the router across the house to the switch.

If you need wireless access points in two parts of the house, you have to buy a second wireless router and turn off the routing function on it and turn it into just an access point for your network. One of the routers has to be the main router that supplies ip addresses to your devices. When you picked which router you want to be just an access point, log into it and configure the network address and subnet mask to be exactly the same as the other is using (should be something like 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0). Also turn off dhcp so there is no conflict with your main router.
If you don't want to turn a router into an access point, you should be able to buy an access point device that you could just plug into the switch that i mentioned in configuration option described above.

 

[jayambroziak]

I agree with dextermat on using wired (ethernet) for anything that needs consistent speed. However, if you still want to go the wireless route, it is very easy to do. Since the utility room with the comcast modem is right next to your "gaming" room, you can have a router set up there that you make (for lack of better terms) the master and your belkin wireless router can be the slave. Your new router will essentially assign all of the ip addresses in the network (and still have wifi) and your belkin can work as a network switch and wifi access point. Both of the routers can even have the same broadcast id and password. This configuration will make all of your computers in the house recognizable to each other. There are many guides on the internet. Google: adding a second wireless router to a network.

 

[flexxar]

I agree with dextermat on using wired (ethernet) for anything that needs consistent speed. However, if you still want to go the wireless route, it is very easy to do. Since the utility room with the comcast modem is right next to your "gaming" room, you can have a router set up there that you make (for lack of better terms) the master and your belkin wireless router can be the slave. Your new router will essentially assign all of the ip addresses in the network (and still have wifi) and your belkin can work as a network switch and wifi access point. Both of the routers can even have the same broadcast id and password. This configuration will make all of your computers in the house recognizable to each other. There are many guides on the internet. Google: adding a second wireless router to a network.

I wouldn't advise assigning them both the same SSID. I ran into issues when I tried that. The devices don't automatically connect to the strongest signal. I found that I would be standing right next to one of the routers and my computer would want to stay connected to the one across the house. There is no way that I found to make it fail over to the other one. When you use a separate SSID, you pick which one you connect to.

 

[jayambroziak]

Yeah, thinking back, I had problems with my devices connecting to the stronger signal. Good thinking flexxar.
As for a network switch, he wouldn't be able to use one in his utility room, straight from the modem. He'd need a router in between the switch and modem to assign ip addresses. Plus, you can get a cheap wireless router for about the same price as a switch and accomplish the same thing with added wireless connectivity.

 

[Lucas Brown]

I just found this on Amazon. What do you think of it?

http://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7228APn-150Mbps-Wireless-Extender/dp/B005KN1YV6/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

 

[flexxar]

Yeah, thinking back, I had problems with my devices connecting to the stronger signal. Good thinking flexxar.
As for a network switch, he wouldn't be able to use one in his utility room, straight from the modem. He'd need a router in between the switch and modem to assign ip addresses. Plus, you can get a cheap wireless router for about the same price as a switch and accomplish the same thing with added wireless connectivity.

I realized that to add the switch as i suggested, two cables would have to be run between the switch and the router, but can can be done. One would be for the wan interface on the router to communicate with the isp using public ip addresses. The other would be from one of the switchports on the router to deliver ip addresses to the devices hanging off of the switch using private ip addresses. I've used switches to carry multiple networks without issue before, so I know it works. Switches are layer 2 devices and don't care about ip addresses. They only use mac addresses.

In theory, it might even be possible to loop the wan interface of the router into one of the switchports of the router and then run just one cable between the router and switch. I never tried it, but I don't see why that wouldn't work.

 

[flexxar]

I just found this on Amazon. What do you think of it?

http://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7228APn-150Mbps-Wireless-Extender/dp/B005KN1YV6/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

That should work. I would try to find one that is 300mbps instead of 150mbps though and one that says gigabit ethernet (i don't think that one says if it is or not).

I think the easiest way to get what you want is to buy an access point like that. Move your existing router near the utility/game room and put your new access point where your router used to be. Then connect the devices in your game room to the router you moved down there either through wire or wireless.

 

[Lucas Brown]

I'm leaning towards just buying a router and using it as an access point. If I do that, will I be able to use the ethernet ports on my "access point" router to connect devices? Also, can anyone recommend a cheap (as in under $50) router to buy and use as an access point? As it will only be used by devices in relatively close range, I don't need super long rage, a majority of my devices will be connected via ethernet anyways. As I was saying, I was thinking about the Linksys e1000-2000 series, but I don't know much about the router market at all, so any advice is appreciated! (Also, I would prefer to buy refurbished as I am not looking to invest a lot in this router.)

 

[flexxar]

Yeah, you can use the ethernet ports. I would just search newegg, amazon, or any good store and search for 802.11n routers. Buy the one with the best customer rating for your price range.

Something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833166064 would probably do it for you for $20. You're going to probably have to pay more than $50 for name brands, so if you want to stay under that, you'll have to rely on customer ratings.

 

[Lucas Brown]

What do you think of a refurbished Linksys e1500? Does having gigabit ethernet really matter all that much?

http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Linksys-Refurbished-Wireless-N-SpeedBoost/dp/B00695LU5O/ref=pd_cp_pc_0

 

[flexxar]

It will do the job. Gigabit isn't going to make much difference unless you are doing a lot of streaming between devices inside the house. Anything leaving your network will be bottle-necked at the speed of your internet connection.

 

[Lucas Brown]

Ok thanks for your help!