Question Looking for information about a networking setup

JackHinton

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Nov 23, 2016
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Hi, my friend currently has a problem with his internet connection on his pc. He lives in a garage annex which is disconnected from the main house where the main internet router is. Currently, from this main router there is a cat6 cable which runs outside into the annex and into another router, which provides a separate network name for wireless and from this router a cat6 cable is connected straight to the PC. The quality of the connection doing it this way is very unreliable, it is much worse than being at the main house even though it is a fully wired connection. The distance between the house and annex is less than 50 metres so the cat6 cable should not be losing any signal due to the length. Using the wifi that the annex router provides makes the PC connection even worse, making even a simple discord call lag. There has been no alteration to the software side of the routers or network to his knowledge. The main goal is to get a wired connection directly from the house to the PC in the annex whilst also boosting the wifi for phone and smart tv use. I don't know if the use of a full router in the annex is necessary, or some sort of wifi booster with ethernet passthrough would be better. If there is any more information that you need to help this issue then just ask. Please send links to any recommended networking devices that would help this problem. Thanks!
 

RealBeast

Titan
Moderator
There are two ways to get a proper network connection.
If he wants to be part of the same single network as the house he must connect the cable from an LAN port of router 1 to an LAN port of his router and turn OFF DHCP on his second router. Best to assign his second router a static address in the setup of the primary (1st) router. This basically makes his router 2 into an access point and router 1 assigns all the network addresses and all devices can communicate.

If he wants a distinct subnet that does not interact with the first router's networked devices then he would attach the cable from router 1 to his WAN port and give his router a different network address (say router 1 is 192.168.0.1, then his would be like 192.168.0.2) and he must set his router 2 gateway address to the first router address (192.168.0.1 in my example), leaving DHCP on for his router.

HERE is a simple map of the second approach with isolated subnet.

Questions?
 
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Looks like someone with no networking knowledge put this together. Simply slapping routers together. The simplest solution is to use an access point in the annex garage instead of a router. Let the main router in the house handle all the DHCP IP assignment. I think what's happening is you're double NAT'd and some ports are not opening correctly to the ISP.

Depending on the router used in the annex, you could possible set that into access point mode(DHCP turned off).

The proper thing to do is to actually get your own internet for the apartment. If the ISP found out the landlord was sharing with the tenants in a separate apartment(not just renting a room). They could get in trouble for breaching terms of service.