Help with daisy chaining routers

K

kbend

25+ Posts
I currently have 3 wired PC's in a home network (also sharing cable Internet) using a Netgear RT314 router.

I also have a laptop that I want to hook-in to the network as a wireless device, so I bought a Linksys WRT54G wireless router (it has wired ports too).

Since I'm very lazy and don't want to reconfigure my current network, I want to just add the router to my network and use it's wireless features only for the laptop.

How do I attach the extra new Linksys router? Do I just run a Cat5 cable from the open port on my wired-only Netgear router to the Linksys?

OR

Do I bite the bullet and throw the Netgear router in the trash and connect all wired PC's to this new Linksys router?
 
If I were you I would just use a single router, I recently replaced my old one and it took me no more than 30 minutes to reconfigure everything. Before I thought about doing something similar since my old linksys wireless router was always needed to be reset. It is far more complicated than you think, you need to change the address of both routers from the factory default, you need to set one up as a gateway (the non wireless one), maybe even use a crossover cable to connect them both but I am not sure. I did not give it much thought or put anything into practice.
 
I second the motion for using 1 router. I use 2 at home, but that is because my old wired SMC had a built in printer server, and my new D-Link wireless did not. In my case, I could not connect the WAN port of the SMC to a LAN port on the D-Link because the printer port was only accessible from the LAN side of the SMC. I had to hard code the LAN IP address of the SMC to be in the same subnet as my D-Link LAN, and the physical connection was LAN to LAN.

In your case, as long as the wired PCs on your old LAN don't need to see your laptop, you should be able to use DHCP on the wireless WAN port, allowing it to pick up an address from your old router. Your LAN subnet on the wireless should be different from the LAN subnet on the old router.

That being said, just go with the single router. All your current PCs are likely using DHCP, so there's nothing new to configure for them. You have to configure the new router for wireless regardless, so you aren't saving any extra work by keeping both routers. Donate the old one to a good cause, or save it for emergencies.
 
I second, third, or fourth the idea of consolidating to 1 router.....I have 2 b/c I have 6 computers going but it's not as easy to set them up.
 
And then you need an SSH program for Windows; and then someone has to explain what SSH is and how to use it; and then someone suggests forwarding other ports to enable standard Windows browsing; and then someone goes back to "just use 1 router."

Yes, there are many options for using multiple routers and maintaining full functionality. Considering that the original poster's reason for using 2 routers was to avoid excessive configuration, I don't think extensive port forwarding is the way to go in this case.
 
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