Help with my wireless network setup...

DJ...

DJ...

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So lightning struck my D-Link 2750U router the other night - it seems to have only blown the ADSL port - everything else works just fine. I replaced it with a Netgear DGN2200M but it is really such a crap thing - I thought it would be great, but it really isn't. My D-Link gave me double the wireless throughput which is really important to me as I wirelessly stream video over the network.

So....what I'd like to do is let the Netgear manage the ADSL aspect and have the D-Link handle the wireless, but I'd like to use just one router to connect. Is this possible? I know that I can connect one router to another and I then have to switch off the DHCP server in one of them (not sure which one) but I'm not clued up on how to connect them like this.

Some advice would be greatly appreciated...
 
Switch off DHCP in the D-Link. Otherwise get an extender
 
So I just run an ethernet cable between the two and switch off DHCP in the D-Link? That's it?
 
Guys I need some help with this. So I've connected the two together and disabled the DHCP server on the D-Link. It works. Sometimes. And sometimes not. Is there something else that I need to do to get them working? I also have a wireless extender. Will I still be able to connect the extender to the D-Link or should I connect it to the Netgear instead?

I'm not altogether clued up on this stuff at all...
 
Hi

Setup should be like this :

ADSL -- Netgear (ADSL enabled, wifi disabled, DHCP enabled, 192.168.0.1) <=== CAT5===> D-Link (ADSL disabled, wifi enabled, DHCP disabled, 192.168.0.2)

On the D-Link look for an option called DHCP passthrough, enable it, if it asks for a source IP, use the Netgear's IP.

Make sure the D-Link and the Netgear doesn't use the same IP (as per above).
 
The problem was that they were both using the same IP. I reset the D-Link to factory defaults and started again. Working perfectly now. I've decided to leave the wireless on on both of them but on different channels. That way some devices can use the wireless on the Netgear to stream and some devices can use the D-Link. That way if two are streaming at the same time they won't halve the wireless throughput. It also means that the range extender works perfectly with the Netgear and the devices streaming from the extender won't interfere at all with the devices using the D-Link.

Well chuffed with this now...
 
One thing I've noticed is that I can't log in to the D-Link router any longer. And if I check attached devices on the Netgear, my laptop that is connecting from the D-Link doesn't show up. Or if it does, it doesn't give the name - it just gives the MAC address, which is problematic as I need to set a static IP for the laptop connected to the D-Link.

Does it perhaps assign the IP to the D-Link? If so, how do I know which one it is?

EDIT: nevermind. It must assign the router the IP, so I disconnected everything until only the router was attached, and found the MAC address that way. All sorted, I think...
 
Last edited:
DJ... said:
The problem was that they were both using the same IP. I reset the D-Link to factory defaults and started again. Working perfectly now. I've decided to leave the wireless on on both of them but on different channels. That way some devices can use the wireless on the Netgear to stream and some devices can use the D-Link. That way if two are streaming at the same time they won't halve the wireless throughput. It also means that the range extender works perfectly with the Netgear and the devices streaming from the extender won't interfere at all with the devices using the D-Link.

Well chuffed with this now...
Click to expand...

I suggest you move all your default equipment off the default IP addresses, so my typical setups include 192.168.5.x, or 192.168.25.x or 10.0.23.x or something like that. That way I know when I plug in any new equipment, I know the likelyness of a conflict is highly unlikely. Make sure you remain within the private address ranges

Most equipment comes with 192.168.0.x, 192.168.1.x or 10.0.0.x (Telkom) as default.
 
imranpanji said:
I suggest you move all your default equipment off the default IP addresses, so my typical setups include 192.168.5.x, or 192.168.25.x or 10.0.23.x or something like that. That way I know when I plug in any new equipment, I know the likelyness of a conflict is highly unlikely. Make sure you remain within the private address ranges

Most equipment comes with 192.168.0.x, 192.168.1.x or 10.0.0.x (Telkom) as default.
Click to expand...

I changed the D-Link from 10.0.0.2 to 192.168.1.1

Is there anything else I should be changing? It's all working fine now, apart from me not being able to log in to the D-Link router at all, which isn't all that important...
 
DJ... said:
I changed the D-Link from 10.0.0.2 to 192.168.1.1

Is there anything else I should be changing? It's all working fine now, apart from me not being able to log in to the D-Link router at all, which isn't all that important...
Click to expand...

On your WiFi routers, you can make IP address dhcp reservations for your frequently used devices, so that they get the same IP address every time.

So for example my router IP address is 192.168.5.1
My dhcp is set to assign IP addresses from 192.168.5.100 to 5.200 (100 IP addresses is plenty for a home setup)

Then I setup a reservation list as follows:

Servers from 5.10 upward
Printers from 5.20 upward
VoIP devices from 5.30 upward
Tablets from 5.40 upward
Phones from 5.50 upward
Computer clients from 5.60 upward

Etc

Let's take printers for example.
In the router dhcp reservation list, I setup my HP LaserJet as 192.168.5.20 by adding a dhcp reservation on the router linked to this printers mac address. My canon inkjet I setup as 5.21 the same way.

The beauty of this is that every time I come home my laptop, tablets and phones always get the same IP address via dhcp every time, and when I go elsewhere it gets a new IP address via dhcp as well. So no fiddling around with the client all work is done on the router, and the only real static IP is my router.

Also, all my fixed devices (servers,printers,smart tv ) have fixed IP addresses which I can change on the router also

Additional advantage, if you using dyn DNS or no IP services, you can setup port forwards to these reserved dhcp IP addresses. So I can tell someone to remote into any device easily even if its a device I just walked in with, as deck hands it the same IP address every time
 
Oh I see what you mean, thanks. I already do that for a few devices that run XBMC, which require static IP addresses so that my Android remote apps work each time without reconfiguring. I'd never really thought of doing this for all of the devices in the house as it's never warranted it before, but thanks for the advice - much appreciated...
 
DJ... said:
Oh I see what you mean, thanks. I already do that for a few devices that run XBMC, which require static IP addresses so that my Android remote apps work each time without reconfiguring. I'd never really thought of doing this for all of the devices in the house as it's never warranted it before, but thanks for the advice - much appreciated...
Click to expand...

Am too lazy to login to my router every time. So all sites I setup have a similar structure. So at 2 offices and home, I know my servers are always .10+ , printers are .20+ etc. So I don't really even know their IP addresses sometimes but can remote to them by calculated guessing
 
One thing that's a bit of an issue - I can no longer login to the D-Link. I can only login to the Netgear. Is there any way around this?

I use Unified Remote on my phone to control my PCs and it is refusing to work on the PC connected to the D-Link. I'm assuming I have to do some sort of port forwarding on the D-Link of TCP and UDP (not 100% sure how I'll do this to begin with), but it seems logging in to the D-Link is just not possible. Do I really have to reset the factory settings and start all over to make changes to the D-Link?
 
Well the Netgear is 10.0.0.2 and the D-Link I changed to 192.168.1.1 and switched off the DHCP server...
 
DJ... said:
Well the Netgear is 10.0.0.2 and the D-Link I changed to 192.168.1.1 and switched off the DHCP server...
Click to expand...

Your dlink needs to be on the same subnet as the netgear, which is probably why you can't access it. change it to something like 10.0.0.250 or 10.0.0.5 . The key is that it should be out of the range that is given out by dhcp (10.0.0.100 to 10.0.0.200?)
 
So I've finally set everything up properly and it works like an absolute dream. I also moved the two routers about 1 metre away from each other and it has made an absolute world of difference. I now connect at the full 150mbps that my card can handle and I get throughput when transferring files of between 8 and 9MB/s. I have never had that sort of speed before. I could only ever get max 5MB/s.

All I did was open the wifi network properties to see the connection speed, and then changed the channels to see which one connected at the best speed - turns out channel 3 was the one, so I moved the Netgear channel to 10 to ensure no interference and it now works beautifully. Very chuffed. I also changed the D-Link ip to be within the Netgear's subnet so can login to both routers at the same time now.

The awesome thing is that the 9MB/s throughput is stable - it doesn't fluctuate like it did before. It just blazes through. My 9gig Cosmos DVD set just transferred to the main server from my laptop in just a few minutes, whereas before it would have taken at least a half an hour to an hour...:)
 
I used Wi-Fi Analyzer to check but it seems that some channels just work better than others. Channel 4 refuses to connect at above 20mbps even without other interference. Channel 3 works perfectly...
 
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