Two routers together?

byte

OK, here's my setup.

I have my main "workstation" upstairs, which is where my Belkin DSL modem/router is. This has 4 ethernet ports and wifi. One cable goes downstairs to a basic Netgear switch, which is connected to sat receiver, PS3 and soon hopefully a NAS.

Problem I have, is that wifi downstairs is weak from the Belkin router upstairs. There are two antennae on it, but they cannot be changed to ones with higher gain. So, what I'd like to do is possibly change the Netgear switch downstairs for a spare wifi router I have (this has no DSL modem, just 1 Ethernet in and 4 out). That way, I'd have wifi source both upstairs and downstairs.

What I wonder is, is it possible to have 2 routers running together. I'd imagine maybe issues with DHCP from two sources, or something.

Any advice appreciated.

aidan_walsh

If you could get both routers working together as a single network in bridging mode only the primary would do DHCP.

byte

If using bridging mode, would I still be able to avail of wifi signals from both routers though?

I guess I'd better read up on bridging a bit, as last time I bridged two routers, the first router disabled 3 of the ethernet ports, leaving only 1 for connetion to other router.

randomer

Bridging is exactly what you want. I needed to get a wired port at the back of my house for a wired IP phone. Rather than running a cable, I got a second router and put it in bridging mode and connected it to my primary router. I am using two Buffalo routers and it was fairly easy to setup.

Sniipe

Wow, this is exactly what I need to do as well. I've got 2 belkin routers that I need to "bridge".

(I have Broadband coming in downstairs and only 1 cable going upstairs which connects to a router... but I've a PS3 downstairs and no net connection, so a second router would work for me... I must give it a try...)

byte

Just so I get this right...

Am I right in thinking it's the secondary router I need to bridge, leaving the ADSL modem/router alone?

Bridging will have no affect on the 4 LAN ports on both routers, and also allow the wifi element of both routers to continue working?

Thanks for the responses so far.

Moriarty

That's the one, byte. Turning on bridging mode just turns the device into a network bridge, aka a switch. All routing functionality is turned off.

byte

Cheers. Will experimment with that soon, so.

Thanks again.