Wanting to know if I can replace by expensive Router with a switch

[clark10clark]

Hello,

Here is the situation at my house. I have an Arris 4 port wireless/cable modem/router that I rent from the cable company. The ip Address is 192.168.0.1. I have a couple of the ports connect to local machines that are right near the router all the time. This router has DHCP enabled and assigns devices up to 192.168.0.10

Coming out of the 4th port I have that attached to a Cisco RV082 8 port VPN Router. (192.168.0.2). This device also have DHCP enabled and assigns devices from 192.168.0.100 to 192.168.0.149 I have network drops all over the house attached to CAT6 cable and a patch panel in my office so I attach most of the other peripheral devices around the house to this router. One of the ports I have running to an additional cisco wireless router that I use only as a wireless bridge so I can have wireless all over the house.

My question is this. - Everything is working flawlessly right now on my network except over the years the Cisco RV082 8 ports are starting to die. Right now only 5 of the 8 ports work. Assuming this is a hardware issue. Even after resetting the router several times they won't come back. So instead of buying another expensive router to replace this 8 port one can I just buy a cheaper 8 or 16 port switch instead?

Will my Arris main router assign IP addresses to all of the devices on the switch as well. I am not a network guy so wanted to ask before I spend money on an additional device.

Appreciate your help

 

[john-b691]

I am somewhat surprised that you do not have problems with 2 devices on the same network giving out DHCP addresses. Although they don't overlap it still will be random which device the PC uses.

It should work fine to replace the router with a switch as long as you are not using any of the feature like the VPN on the router.

 

[clark10clark]

Thanks John

I only seem to have trouble when the power goes out. I have to manually bring everything back up in order or the network gets screwy. Most likely due to the fact that I have 2 devices assigning.Originally I just had a normal cable modem attached to my linksys 8 port but recently upgraded my service and they gave me a wireless cablemodem/router combo in place of my previous modem

I have attempted to shut off the dhcp server on the linksys router but the router starts acting up when I do that. I think the device is dying a slow death to be honest