[SOLVED] Help needed to extend network, please

[Mysteryman2]

I'll be honest....networking confuses me! So, forgive the naive questions, please.....

Here's what I have at the moment:

Main network (router, connected to internet) with following connections:

• PC
• Sky box
• Satellite STB
• Homeplug

Second network, which is used for music & videos (a different router, not connected to internet) with following connections:

• NAS
• Popcorn Hour media player
• Squeezebox media player

This all works fine, but, 2 networks are completely separate and I am going to replace the Popcorn Hour with one that has an internal HDD. I wondered if I would be able to combine all this onto my main network and my thoughts are to replace the 2nd router with a 5-way network switch and plug in the following:

• connection to main router
• NAS
• Popcorn Hour media player with internal HDD
• Squeezebox media player
• 2nd Sky box

If I did this:

1. Would the Squeezebox be able to access the NAS still?
2. Would I be able to use the PC to "see" the NAS and Popcorn Hour HDD so that I can manage them and copy files from the PC?

Any advice would be most gratefully received....thanks!

 

[bill001g]

That is the advantage of having everything on 1 single network in your house everything can communicate. You of course need to be sure that the IP addresses are all in the same network......I assume you manually assigned them for the second network when you did it that way.

What you can do if you do not want the stuff you currently have on the second network to have access to the internet but still talk to other devices on the internal network is to remove the gateway IP in the network settings or set it to some unused IP if it will not allow blank. This works because what gateway means is the path out of the local network. If you do not tell the device where your router is to get out of the network it has no way to talk to anything else other than the local devices.

I would spend the extra $5 or so to get a 8 port switch just so you have room in case you get another device.

 

[Mysteryman2]

That is the advantage of having everything on 1 single network in your house everything can communicate. You of course need to be sure that the IP addresses are all in the same network......I assume you manually assigned them for the second network when you did it that way.

What you can do if you do not want the stuff you currently have on the second network to have access to the internet but still talk to other devices on the internal network is to remove the gateway IP in the network settings or set it to some unused IP if it will not allow blank. This works because what gateway means is the path out of the local network. If you do not tell the device where your router is to get out of the network it has no way to talk to anything else other than the local devices.

I would spend the extra $5 or so to get a 8 port switch just so you have room in case you get another device.

Thanks for the very reassuring reply and good point about planning for future expansion!

Will the HDDs in NAS and media server just appear on my PC as drives? I am using Windows 10.

 

[bill001g]

I don't know if they just appear or if you have to do something. This is all that "magic" network junk that is used in home networks that I tend to ignore. A NAS is designed to be access via the network and since windows is the most common OS I would assume yours supports microsoft file structures. There still commercial NAS systems that for performance reasons you can not directly just connect to but you will not see that in equipment sold to home users.

If it does not just magically appear I am sure you can just put in the IP address of the NAS device and it will connect. I am sure the manual for the NAS has instructions on how this works.