Home Network issues

PaulieC

Hi,

Hope someone here can help as I'm nearly at the end of my tether with this stuff. I currently have the following setup:

• UPC Broadband (which enters the house through the front sitting room , right in the corner and that's where the Modem/router is situated. It's a standard UPC cisco item)
• From this router are connected (via cable) a DLNA Bluray player and a Synology Diskstation. There is also a cable running to a Powerline adapter.
• In the back room is the other Powerline adapter, connected to a Netgear Wireless Router (WNR2200 I think). This was added as the wireless signal in the back room was weak from the front room and most time is spent in this room.
• Wired from this router is an Xbox 360 and a Sonos Bridge (which itself feeds two PLAY speakers).

Now, all was going fine until about 8 weeks ago. I had a Belkin Modem/Router wired up in the back room and it kept losing network connection. This would require a daily restart and reconnection of the Powerline adapters. So this was replaced by the Netgear router.
Then another problem: I had a Netgear Stora NAS box which (apart from the apparently usual idiosyncracies) worked well for the most part until it gave up being DLNA compliant. No amount of factory resetting/updating/fiddling could coax it back to life, which is where the Synology box comes in.

Now, there are some issue with getting the Synology box up and running (which I am getting Tech Support for), but my main problem is that when I can connected to the router in the back room I can't connect to the diskstation (which is conencted to the router in the front room). Similarly, if I am connected (on ipad) to the router in the fron room, I can't connect to stuff that is wored into the back room router e.g. Sonon controller software can't connect to Sonos Bridge until I switch back to connect to the back room router. This was never an issue when I was using the older belkin router and from what I can see, it's caused by the new router being on a different subnet. The main router is 192.168.1.1 and the old router used to be 192.168.1.2, but the new router is 10.0.0.1. That's the only thing I can't see that is different.

Any ideas ??

Thanks

PogMoThoin

Routers separate networks, you have two separate networks by adding the router to the second room. You need to stop it routing, if it doesn't have an Access Point mode you need to login and turn off DHCP, nat and firewall and don't use the Wan port, connect it by the lan port. This way only the original UPC router will be doing all routing

PaulieC

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Routers separate networks, you have two separate networks by adding the router to the second room. You need to stop it routing, if it doesn't have an Access Point mode you need to login and turn off DHCP, nat and firewall and don't use the Wan port, connect it by the lan port. This way only the original UPC router will be doing all routing

Thanks. I tried turning off DHCP last night and I fubared things completely, had to go back and do a factory restore. I'll have another look tonight with the LAN/WAN/NAT/Firewall info.
Do I just want the second router to be a kind of LAN hub and wireless access point ?

Alun

PaulieC wrote: »

Do I just want the second router to be a kind of LAN hub and wireless access point ?

Basically, yes.

PaulieC

One more question (I think) before I go ahead: both router currently have different SSIDs. Do I now leave them as is or name them both the same or ??

PogMoThoin

PaulieC wrote: »

One more question (I think) before I go ahead: both router currently have different SSIDs. Do I now leave them as is or name them both the same or ??

You can set both to the same with the same encryption type and key but on channels well away from each other.

Mr. G

For those that are interested there's an article here that might be helpful. Be prepared to spend at least 5 minutes reading it though

http://superuser.com/questions/122441/multiple-access-points-for-the-same-ssid

PaulieC

Thanks for all the replies.

I did get it sorted in the end, but not in a way I would've thought. I spent three nights trying to get everything working together nicely before frustration set in. I then had a breakthrough - all I wanted initially was a boost to the wireless signal in the back room and a wired connection from NAS to XBox/Sonos. The router wasn't providing this, so I packed it back in the box and took it back to PCWorld and exchanged it for a plug-in wireless signal booster and a 4-port ethernet hub. Problem solved and no worries about subnets and DHCPs etc. The guy in the shop said that in all probability the router I had had all the features disabled or hidden, which makes sense as there was no way to manipulate the Firewall/DMZ/NAT settings.

Anyhow, thanks!!

PogMoThoin

You really shouldn't listen to the clowns in PCWorld, you've just halved the throughput of your wireless network, I explained it here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=83608744&postcount=7

You were probably losing your dhcp lease when you disabled dhcp on the router and were no longer able to connect to it, a simple static ip on the device you're configuring it with would have solved that.

PaulieC

Interesting. I suppose I should have done that alright. The more important part of the equation was getting media to the xbox and sonos so I'm happy with that.
I still have a Belkin modem router in the shed so might give that a go when it's not as pressing.