connecting 2 routers on one LAN/WLAN with ADSL on main router

[Johan Duplessis]

I have a mixed networking problem. I am trying to make a small office network at my home office and need to match old and new equipment that I already own.

my equipment
1 x billion router n73x (4 port )(ADSL connected here)
1 x intellinet 300n 4 port

7 pc's and laptops in office environment.

my idea. (might not be best idea.)

I want both routers to work as one network. Was thinking to bridge them wired/wi-fi and have the billion router do DHSP control while the second router becomes just a switch. please advise if this can be done.

i want to connect all laptops wi-fi to network.
all PC's will be wired.

OS on laptops/PC's are mixed win 7, win 8,and winXP/XP pro

please advice me on how to get this started and if even possible.

I want to ask that you make only one assumption and that is that my knowledge is very little... feel free to give very plain and noob friendly answers.

thank you in advance for any advice.

 

[Johan Duplessis]

HI,

You can achieve this by plugging your intellinet 300n WAN port with your billion ADSL MODEM. this way your wireless router will be used to server Wifi Devices and for Ethernet computers you have 7 ports available to connect 4 on wifi and 3 on ADSL modem. You might face duplicate IP problem in this scenario however you can overcome this by applying static IP's to your desktops Ethernets from end of DHCP address range.

hi David

thanx for taking the time to answer my problem.

I like the idea of making static IP's on some desktops in the later IP range. the server on network needs a static IP as it runs a main software program that's is used by all clients and every time the IP changes i have to redo the shortcuts.

is there a simpler way to ensure that the server (win7 OS on it) will remain one IP (Static) all the time 192.168.1.03 for example.?

 

[bleijendeckers]

As an addition to the answer above.

The internet modem needs to be on a WAN port.
You can connect both wireless access points trough the switch ports to eachother.
One of the routers needs to have the DHCP service on, the other has to have it off. This is crucial, if both routers have DHCP on the network is going to malfunction.

This way you only have 1 network and 1 DHCP service. In general consumer routers have less abilities to program specific functions, but you might be able to reserve IP to MAC addresses in the router DHCP service. This way, each time a system logs on it will receive the same IP. This might be easier then reprogramming the computers each with a static IP. But manually programming the computers will work too. The consumer router IP address reservation might work very badly and thus you might need to program it on the computers. For example, the router at my parents house offers functionality but keeps forgetting all reserved IP's constantly.

One hint, when having both access points in range of eachother make sure to:
1) Use the same SSID, security measures and password on both access points
2) Use a different channel on each device well out of range of the other channel(s) in use to keep distortion to a minimum (for the 2.4 Ghz band use 1, 6 and/or 11). These do not overlap.
This way your wireless appliances will choose the best signal and switch between access points depending on where you are.

If the server is online all the time you could let the server handle the DHCP service, then you disable this on both routers. This way reserving IP addresses might work better.