Adding D-Link Router to Home Wired with Ethernet Jacks

[bsabatini]

Purchased a D-Link DIR-615 Wireless router so that we can have wireless Internet on one side of very large house. The whole house has Ethernet jacks in all the rooms, and the cable modem is in the basement with a switch plugged into it patching all the rooms in. If I plug my laptop into the jack in the bedroom I get Internet with no problem. I want to plug a router in there instead so that I can get wireless with the laptop in the bedroom and on that end of the house. I cannot get the Internet light to come on the router and DLink support tells me that the only way possible for me to get the Internet on the router is to connect the cable modem to the router directly. I can't do this because the modem is in the basement on the wrong side of the house. If I put the router down there the signal will not be strong enough. I just want to know if this is true or was the DLink guy wrong?

[mike171562]

Did you set your Router's internet Connection type to DHCP or dynamic IP? What does your router say under that "Status" tab of the Web interface? You might need to access your Router's Web interface and disable NAT and DHCP if those functions are available.

[johnwill]

Not to worry, they're wrong.

First off, you obviously have a router in the basement, since you have multiple connections to the cable modem. What you really need is a WAP, and you can make one from that router with this configuration.



Connecting two (or more) SOHO broadband routers together.

Note: The "primary" router can be an actual router, a software gateway like Microsoft Internet Connection Sharing, or a server connection that has the capability to supply more than one IP address using DHCP server capability. No changes are made to the primary "router" configuration.

Configure the IP address of the secondary router(s) to be in the same subnet as the primary router, but out of the range of the DHCP server in the primary router. For instance DHCP server addresses 192.168.0.2 through 192.168.0.100, I'd assign the secondary router 192.168.0.254 as it's IP address, 192.168.0.253 for another router, etc.

Note: Do this first, as you will have to reboot the computer to connect to the router again for the remaining changes.

Disable the DHCP server in the secondary router.

Setup the wireless section just the way you would if it was the primary router, channels, encryption, etc.

Connect from the primary router's LAN port to one of the LAN ports on the secondary router. If there is no uplink port and neither of the routers have auto-sensing ports, use a cross-over cable. Leave the WAN port unconnected!

This procedure bypasses the routing function (NAT layer) and configures the router as a switch (or wireless access point for wireless routers).

For reference, here's a link to a Typical example config using a Netgear router