Networking question

[Ryushikaze]

Hello, all. I've got a question regarding networking I was hoping you could solve.

I've got a home wireless network, and it works perfectly fine. I've been trying to set up a second network for my gaming systems, but it doesn't seem to want to work.

Now, I've gone in and configured the router to read as a different network and a slightly different IP address than my main router, I've set it so it should be able to receive data from the main router, but upon testing, it is not working properly.
Does anyone here know what I need to do to get a second wireless router to broadcast to properly send and receive data through a primary router?
Any help would be most appreciated.

[Starglider]

I've been trying to set up a second network for my gaming systems, but it doesn't seem to want to work.

A second network as in a second IP range which you want the second router to act as a gateway in, conencting to the IP range for the first router's LAN, which it then acts as an Internet gateway on? If so, why? A typical consumer wireless router is not capable of doing this. It should be capable of acting as a simple wireless switch, i.e. a shared 802.11g adapter for all the computers connected to it with ethernet cables, but that will likely only work if there is only one logical LAN with a shared IP range.

[General Zod]

Hello, all. I've got a question regarding networking I was hoping you could solve.

I've got a home wireless network, and it works perfectly fine. I've been trying to set up a second network for my gaming systems, but it doesn't seem to want to work.

Now, I've gone in and configured the router to read as a different network and a slightly different IP address than my main router, I've set it so it should be able to receive data from the main router, but upon testing, it is not working properly.
Does anyone here know what I need to do to get a second wireless router to broadcast to properly send and receive data through a primary router?
Any help would be most appreciated.

Did you try changing the default channel of the second router?

[phongn]

Need more information on what settings you've used.

[Ryushikaze]

A second network as in a second IP range which you want the second router to act as a gateway in, conencting to the IP range for the first router's LAN, which it then acts as an Internet gateway on? If so, why? A typical consumer wireless router is not capable of doing this. It should be capable of acting as a simple wireless switch, i.e. a shared 802.11g adapter for all the computers connected to it with ethernet cables, but that will likely only work if there is only one logical LAN with a shared IP range.

Actually, I was attempting to have it use the same IP range but use a different Network name and encryption.

Did you try changing the default channel of the second router?

Come to think of it, No. I'll try that.

Need more information on what settings you've used.

It's a Lynksys Wireless B router, WEP key, MAC address restricted (though both my computer and my test machine have access to it), aside from that, it was basically factory standard.

The primary router is Wireless G with WPA encryption, no MAC restriction, and is factory default otherwise.

[Starglider]

Actually, I was attempting to have it use the same IP range but use a different Network name and encryption.

Do you mean you have two routers connected by ethernet, that you want to act as wireless nodes, operating on different channels and network IDs, but appearing as a single LAN at the IP lelve?

This will not work, because when the hosts in wirless network B try to send packets to hosts in wireless network A (including your Internet gateway), they will try to do so directly and the packets will go unreceived. Professional grade wireless routers and bridges can listen promiscuously for packets that need to be transparently forwarded to a different network segment, but typical consumer routers are not equipped to do this.

The only way this might work is to have two seperate IP ranges, define the second router as the gateway for the second network, and define the first (Internet-connected) router as the gateway for the first network and specifically as the upstream gateway for the second router. However cheap and nasty routers typically have a single port defined as the WAN port and all the rest defined as LAN ports, and will only route packets at the IP layer (as opposed to just switching them at the ethernet layer) when they traverse between the LAN and WAN ports. If the WAN port on the second router is a cable or DSL port you are screwed, if it is an Ethernet port then you can plug it into one of the upstream router's LAN ports and you should be fine.

I am actually using this configuration at home ATM - I have a DSL router configured to route an outer LAN of static IP addresses, to which my workstation and the switch with various test servers hanging off it are connected. One of the static IPs is taken up by an ethernet-to-ethernet router/firewall, behind which is an inner NATed LAN containing the laptops and my partner's desktop PC.

[phongn]

One thing he could try is to disable the DHCP server on the second router, connect the two routers via their LAN (and not WAN) links and see if that works.

[Starglider]

One thing he could try is to disable the DHCP server on the second router, connect the two routers via their LAN (and not WAN) links and see if that works.

It won't, because the first router will be set directly as the gateway for the whole network, and the hosts on the second wireless network will try to send packets directly to the first router, rather than via the second router. Even if you used a single network ID and channel, which would make the single IP shared range reasonable, you'd still have this problem for all hosts which are out of range of the primary internet-connected router (which I presume some are otherwise why would you be bothering with the second router in the first place).

EDIT: However this assumes the second network is in peer-to-peer mode (which is usually the default) for infrastructure mode see my other post below.

If this is the case leaving DHCP enabled on the second router can't really make things any worse. If it's configured with two distinct IP subnets with proper routing between them, you can leave DHCP enabled on both routers and things should work, although your second router may not implement a DHCP client (assuming it is ethernet/wireless-to-ethernet capable), in which case you will want to assign it a static IP address on the first network (generally this will be at the high end of the private address range, if your first router is assigning addresses sequentially from the low end). Here I've got the inner router running a DHCP server for the NATed LAN but not on the outer router since the all the hosts on the outer LAN are statically assigned.

[Stark]

I don't get the point. If he's got a net connection or a fileserver he wants two different wireless networks to access, that's really quite trivial. Why all these crazy 'same IP range' demands? Two discrete wireless networks using different IP ranges on the same subnet and plugged into the same wired switch should get full access to resources, right?

The only game system that can't use real security is a DS, and doing all this bullshit just to get a DS online is insane. Buy a USB wireless dongle, the end. All other wireless consoles can use proper WPA2 security, so is there a reason to have them on a separate wireless network?

[Starglider]

Two discrete wireless networks using different IP ranges on the same subnet and plugged into the same wired switch should get full access to resources, right?

If both networks are in infrastructure mode (relaying everything through their respective access points, no peer-to-peer), and the APs are operating as proper layer-2 ethernet switches, then theoretically yes. Unfortunately infrastructure mode halves your node-to-node bandwidth, but if the AP can't support a wireless IP subnet and route it properly to the wired subnet then it's your only option for a mixed (full-visibility) network.

Infrastructure mode implementations can suck too much for this to work though. When I was at university a friend of mine couldn't get her laptop wireless card to work on the university network - it worked fine with the (cheap and nasty) ADSL wireless router it was bundled with, but not the university's huge multi-AP LAN. Given how horrible the driver was (complete with Engrish GUI - I had a go at troubleshooting it) my guess it that it was assuming the IP gateway was always the same node (i.e. at the same ethernet address) as the access point. As I recall she never got that to work until she upgraded her laptop to one with built-in 802.11g.

[Lisa]

you can cascade routers (ive done it). here's how it works


Router one (refered to as "One" from now on)- hooks directly up to your interweb.
Router two (refered to as "Two" from now on)- connects from it's wan port into one of lan ports on One.

now here's the tricky part.

One's configuration is probably fine the way it is, wan is set for how ever you get on the internet, the default ip range is probably fine as well (ie 192.168.1.x). set up your dns server and gateway entries as required by your isp.

Two on the other hand is the tricky part. Wan ip must be on the range of One's lan (ie 192.168.1.201 from example above). Lan ip range must be DIFFERENT then then one's ip range (ie 192.168.2.x or 10.0.1.x). if you set it up to the same you will have unroutable network tables. set one as your gateway, set up valid dns info (such as the servers you put in 1 or just point at one if it's capable of providign dns.)

computers on one will be reachable by computers on two but not vice versa. For sanity's sake I recommend different channels (use only 1,6 or 11 or you will have overlap) and different network names..

I can draw out a diagram in paint if you need clarification.


an alternate set up if you want to have 2 wireless networks on the same ip range would be to set it up this way.

One as above.

Two in access point mode, ignore the wan port and use one of the lan ports to connect to a lan port on One. disable dhcp, make sure it's on a different channel, have a different name (you want to be able to tell what network you are having trouble with.
the benefit of the second is if you say want an extender or have a mixed mode network (wep or wap) that you want to be able to disable.

using the network security you can also set it so you can white list certain mac addresses to connect to various sites and limit other mac addresses to fewer sites and ones not on the list you can black list from any site.

Now if you are trying to make Two work as an extender with no wires at all, well you'll have to invest in a router capable of this, the average router can not. I know usr has one (150$ iirc) and apples airports will do this (100-200$).