Using 2 wireless modems on the same network

[HockeyPuck]

Originally Posted by McG

this is a great thread. the dlink 815 is a simultaneous dual band router so you can assign different devices to the 2.4 or the 5.0 networks.

when i set up my shaw docsis 3.0 router, i disabled the wireless on it and plugged my linksys router with wireless into it to provide the same dual band functionality. i did not reassign IP addresses or anything like that and so far everything works fabu. of course, i am only using one lan port on the docsis router, but i have a gigabit switch behind the linksys router to give me extra ports. i do not have the shaw router operating in bridge mode.

i was just wondering if someone could explain why my setup works...but hockeypuck and others have had to manually assign IP addresses in their solution? i'm not sure why mine works when i didn't do any of that stuff. thanks!

McG,

I'm going to try your setup tonight. A couple questions. So when you plug your network cable into your Linksys coming from the Cisco, is it plugged into the LAN port or the internet port?

Did you have to keep the SSID that's assigned to your Cisco or can you make up your own?

Sorry if these are dumb questions.

[CKPThunder]

Originally Posted by McG

this is a great thread. the dlink 815 is a simultaneous dual band router so you can assign different devices to the 2.4 or the 5.0 networks.

when i set up my shaw docsis 3.0 router, i disabled the wireless on it and plugged my linksys router with wireless into it to provide the same dual band functionality. i did not reassign IP addresses or anything like that and so far everything works fabu. of course, i am only using one lan port on the docsis router, but i have a gigabit switch behind the linksys router to give me extra ports. i do not have the shaw router operating in bridge mode.

i was just wondering if someone could explain why my setup works...but hockeypuck and others have had to manually assign IP addresses in their solution? i'm not sure why mine works when i didn't do any of that stuff. thanks!

It sounds like you are running two routers in sequence McG. Instead of doing this, why don't you just turn on bridging for your Shaw router? Why have two routers running back-to-back doing the same routing function? You could create some confusion though if you ever turned on wireless on your Shaw router or plugged in a computing device into one of the LAN ports on the Shaw router.

For Hockeypuck, if the wireless from his D-link router is able to give him satisfactory wireless coverage from its upstairs location, then I would also suggest to him that he gets his Cisco router set into bridge mode and use his D-link as his home router. If he does this, then the network connection from his Cisco would go into his WAN(internet) port on his D-link. For some reason, I thought he wanted two wireless AP's to give himself adequate coverage throughout his house.

The reason why Hockeypuck needed to assign a static IP to his D-link is that the router cannot accept a DCHP address from the LAN ports. This is according to the D-link manual on page 11.

[McG]

Originally Posted by HockeyPuck

McG,

I'm going to try your setup tonight. A couple questions. So when you plug your network cable into your Linksys coming from the Cisco, is it plugged into the LAN port or the internet port?

Did you have to keep the SSID that's assigned to your Cisco or can you make up your own?

Sorry if these are dumb questions.

no bad questions! i have a few myself hehheh.

i plug a network cable from one of the outbound 4 ports on the cisco into the internet in on my linksys. i mentally treated the cisco as a modem, although it is not.

regarding the ssid that is assigned to the cisco, it doesn't matter because i turned the wireless off and therefore the ssid is not broadcast. the ssid is set by my linksys router, where i made up my own.

hope that this helps! please let us know how you get on.

[McG]

Originally Posted by CKPThunder

It sounds like you are running two routers in sequence McG. Instead of doing this, why don't you just turn on bridging for your Shaw router? Why have two routers running back-to-back doing the same routing function? You could create some confusion though if you ever turned on wireless on your Shaw router or plugged in a computing device into one of the LAN ports on the Shaw router.

For Hockeypuck, if the wireless from his D-link router is able to give him satisfactory wireless coverage from its upstairs location, then I would also suggest to him that he gets his Cisco router set into bridge mode and use his D-link as his home router. If he does this, then the network connection from his Cisco would go into his WAN(internet) port on his D-link. For some reason, I thought he wanted two wireless AP's to give himself adequate coverage throughout his house.

The reason why Hockeypuck needed to assign a static IP to his D-link is that the router cannot accept a DCHP address from the LAN ports. This is according to the D-link manual on page 11.

hi CKPT. thanks for your thoughts to my post. i mentally treat the shaw cisco as a modem, although of course it is more than that. i have plugged directly into the shaw cisco router and things seemed to work fine...but that was only to test the speed! maybe if i was doing other things it would cause an issue...and it was only for a short time. i don't think i will ever turn the shaw wireless on; your note tells me to keep the wireless turned off on the shaw!

is there any "danger" to having 2 routers running like i have them? everything seems to be working as expected 3 weeks in.

thanks for the explanation on the DCHP on hockeypuck's d-link. that makes sense!