Attempting To Setup 3 Network Printers Using A Switch Connected To a Modem / Router Combo

[davidslobberz]

I am trying to setup 3 network printers for a client. He has an Xfinity modem / router, and there is only 1 free ethernet port available on the router. To avoid buying a switch, I used an old router he had lying around. I plugged in the 3 network printers into ports 2, 3, and 4. When plugging the WAN port from the old router to the empty port on the Xfinity modem / router none of the printers show up on the network. A single device does show up as a connected device in the Xfinity admin settings. When I remove the connection from the old routers WAN port and the empty ethernet port on the Xfinity modem, and plug that into port 1 on the old router, 1 of the network printers shows up. So the Xfinity router empty ethernet port is plugged into the old routers port 1. The 3 network printers are plugged into ports 2, 3, and 4, but only 1 of those printers shows up to add in Windows. It doesn't seem to matter which order I plug these in, still only 1 shows up. Is there a solution to get all of the network printers to show up?

 

[Scottray]

You need to turn the old router into an access point.

You need to set old routers IP address to something in the same subnet but outside the DHCP server range of the primary router.
Set subnet to match primary router, and set gateway and dns address to that of the primary router.
Then disable DHCP server on router (also disable NAT and SPI firewall if you have such options).
Then you just hook a cable into the lan portion of the router, and you can then use the other 3 ports.

Of course you can get a 5 port gigabit switch on newegg for $15.99.