Connection Advice needed

TCP/IP

Hi Everybody,

I just wanted to pick peoples brains on some connection plans I have. I have just moved house and and DSL is been installed next week. The problem is I have only a phone line in the kitchen so I will have to plug the wireless Eircom router in there - No real problem in that.

Upstairs I have my PC and conected to that is another wireless router, this router is used to stream media to my networked DVD player/media centre here is a link to it:

http://www.inside.nl/php/netcinema.php (I have the 1350 model)

Now the media center is working perfect and is streaming movies and music fine, but the internet connection on it is not working as I do not have the DSL yet.

I guess my question is when the DSL is installed will the two routers talk to each other and share the internet connection and in turn will my media center be able to use the Net access as well.

If you think I need other wireless gear please tell me.

Just wanted peoples opinion, I really dont want to have to run cat5 to the office and sitting room as the missues will go mental

Thanks,
TCP/IP

grey wolf

I have a similar set up without the media centre and I use a USB wireless adaptor to pick up the signal from the "master pc"-which has a Belkin 54G router attached via ethernet.This might sort it for you?

CuLT

Mate of mine has two wireless routers set up in a similar configuration to the one you're talking about, works perfectly as far as I'm aware.

He's on boards, I'll pm him about this thread to see if he has any useful advice for you.

TCP/IP

Thanks Cult that would be great, I reckon that both should work, my only real concern is that the media centre will not get net access so any advice would be great

bk

The solution here might be to use only one router (the one in the kitchen) and use the other router as a simple Access point for the PC. The Media Centre would connect to the router in the kitchen, this router should be able to manage the transfer of data between the Media Centre and the PC.

BTW that media centre looks cool, where did you get it and how much?

TCP/IP

I will give it a try and see what happens.

Have a look here

http://www.mpeg-playcenter.com/modules.php?name=Mpc_Shop

I got rid of media center 2005 for this and I have not looked back its amazing

zuma

There should be no reason to place a router in the kitchen.

The master socker where I live is in the hall but having sensitive electronic equipment down there was out of th question.
So I solved it by laying down 15m of telephone extension cable, crimped with RJ11 plugs and it works perfectly....213KByte/s constant on downloads!

Placing any sensitive electronic equipment in a kitchen is not a good idea due to the mass buildup of airborne elements when cooking!!!

Ferror

CuLT wrote:

Mate of mine has two wireless routers set up in a similar configuration to the one you're talking about, works perfectly as far as I'm aware.

He's on boards, I'll pm him about this thread to see if he has any useful advice for you.

Ok CuLT pointed me to this so i'll see if i can help out

So, problem as i see it: you wish to connect two wireless routers. One downstairs (beside phone line) to handle the adsl, linked to the second upstairs (handles comp and media center).

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First solution: Ok, so what you would LIKE to do is have the two routers linked wirelessly. with your current setup there's no way to do this without it being very very messy

That being the case some more hardware is required. Basically the way you link two routers is to bridge them with some cat 5/6 cable. Exactly what you don't want

The only way i can think of to join the two routers is with "virtual cat5" here:http://www.expansys.ie/product.asp?code=107131

You'll need two of these though to get the job done and at €140 +p&p the cost is more than a little prohibitive!!

pro's: you get to have lots of shiny, expensive wifi stuff in your house
con's: lots of money, time, hassle and over complexity. (bad)
Turns your house into a microwave

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Second Solution: run a length of cat5 from the router downstairs to the router upstairs. less than perfect as it may be a wee bit of a decorating disaster

If you go ahead with this there are a couple of ways of linking them, depending on compatibility:

Option A: cable from eth port 1 - 4 on the router with net connection to free eth port on the 'media router' upstairs.

netopia router should have standard settings, dhcp enabled, in the routing tables section, rip version 1 should be enabled and option "both" checked.

In the other router dhcp should be disabled allowing the "master" netopia router to assign ip addresses to connected devices, again enable rip version 1 "both" to improve effeciency.

Option B: same as above but keep dhcp enabled on both, avoid using rip and hope for the best

Had to use both methods in the past (compatability issues), had no problems to date on 4 heavy traffic setups.

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Third Solution, cheap cheap:
Like what bk was saying, use one router, netopia or the random, which ever's better.

place it as high as you can in the kitchen. (in a box if you're worried about odd airborne elements)

Put a wifi card in the computer upstairs, negating the need for a wired link to the old router. Config the media centre to work with the netopia. now you've got a transparent link to the media center and the net, problem solved.

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I've set up quite a few networks but the few times i've needed to use double ap's it was because of the stupidly large buildings i was trying to cover. In a normal house a decent setup with the eircom router should be fine

Hope that helps, 'tis a long-ass post!

TimTim

Ferror wrote:

Option B: same as above but keep dhcp enabled on both, avoid using rip and hope for the best

You should avoid using two dhcp servers on the same network, its suicide, a) which server is your box going to get its IP from
b) the default dhcp pool will probaly overlap.

Use your main router as the master dhcp and set the other box to be a dhcp relay.

And I'm no expert on routing but afaik RIP is overkill for a home network, ok I have it turned on between my routers, but I haven't noticed any improvment/disimprovment in doing so. The only thing I see RIP being useful is for networks with a few outbound paths to the net and different IP pools within the same network as to send messages to different subnets you need a WINS server.

Ferror

TimTim wrote:

You should avoid using two dhcp servers on the same network, its suicide, a) which server is your box going to get its IP from
b) the default dhcp pool will probaly overlap.

Use your main router as the master dhcp and set the other box to be a dhcp relay.

And I'm no expert on routing but afaik RIP is overkill for a home network, ok I have it turned on between my routers, but I haven't noticed any improvment/disimprovment in doing so. The only thing I see RIP being useful is for networks with a few outbound paths to the net and different IP pools within the same network as to send messages to different subnets you need a WINS server.

Em, that'll be option a then
(sometimes dhcp pass-through doesn't work so well with netopia boxes, hence me covering all bases with option b, but as you say on the same network is a no no. Btw, why would you specify that the dhcp pools overlap for my Option B? Good insight though)

Generally:
Let router a have range 192.168.1.2 -> 192.168.1.100
Let router b have range 192.168.1.101 -> 192.168.1.254
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(Oh with regards option a, forgot to mention making the second router have the same ip as the gateway for some nice ip passthough action, meh! give it a shot, if there's a problem it's probably that!!)

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Pfft! rip doesn't hurt, it's built into all modern routers except cheap zyxtels

(but we all know they suck )

Not really interested in getting into the tech issues with each of the methods i described tbh, the dude hasn't even decided on what option's best for him yet :rolleyes:

Let me know how you get on m'kay...

TimTim

Ferror wrote:

Em, that'll be option a then

whoops, talk about selective reading.

Ferror

TimTim wrote:

whoops, talk about selective reading.

Yeah it was a long-ass post, no problemo!