running two wireless routers with one cable modem

[zencoder]

ok, so I've still not gotten a clear picture. You have a surfboard 5100...single ethernet jack, right?

And you have 2 WRT54G devices. Where's this 'router' you mention? And is it really a switch? There is no reason this shouldn't work, if you set it up right.

Some questions:
1. How many IP's will your ISP allow you to have? Often it's only 1, but could be more.
2. How are you actually, *PHYSICALLY* connecting these devices. I don't care about channels, ssid's, wep/wpa/ROT13, I wanna know WHICH CABLE goes WHERE.
3. What is your final intent?

[Outer_Heaven]

I am not trying to sound like a smart-ass nor am I claiming to be an expert on this matter but could it be because your PC is trying to connect to the AP it is receiving the highest signal strength and seeing how it is in the middle of two AP's it keeps bouncing back and forth between the two, one being encrypted and one being open?

I am attaching a "paper" titled "Routing and Channel Assignment in Multi-Channel Multi-Hop Wireless Networks with Single NIC Devices" by one Jungmin So and a Nitin H. Viada from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, that I found a few months back, I can't even remember what led me to find it, I think trying to find out if the signal comming out of an AP would constitute as a burst transmission or streaming, that I was surprised that I still had. It doesn't go into mixing open and encypted signals, and after about 5 pages I have no clue of what they are talking about, but maybe it could be of some use to you?

Cheers

[Spyrus]

As interesting as this all sounds noone seemed to ask if both AP's have the same IP or not.... You mentioned that they were both Linksys (192.168.1.1)... are they the wrt54g as in routers? or are they access points?

zencoder brings up a good point, if you dont have a router its not going to work but if you have

cable modem----unsecured wireless router-------secured wireless router
xx.xx.xx.xx         192.168.1.1                                192.168.1.2

that will work

or if you really want to stay even more security minded i would put the secured wireless router on a completely different subnet as the unsecured one. eg 172.xxx.xxx.1 or 10.x.x.1 etc

At this point it should (and does) work fine

[Morvai]

Looking at all of the above...

Isn't it possible to set up just one router as a router? Make sure the second router is not doing anything *special* like maybe DHCP... let it just function as a switch / access point

That way I would also understand setting up the first router as "secure". The second would just be an "insecure" switch.

Also, is it possible to connect from AP2 to the internet using a cable in stead of wireless? Or does it then represent the same behaviour?

Just my two cents...

[zencoder]

Originally posted here by Spyrus
As interesting as this all sounds noone seemed to ask if both AP's have the same IP or not.... You mentioned that they were both Linksys (192.168.1.1)... are they the wrt54g as in routers? or are they access points?<snip>

Actually, this wouldn't matter IF you have both APs configured properly, since both are NAT'ing any of their clients, they can have identical networking schemes. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

The WRT54G is Linksys' combo device...Router/Switch/Access Point. It does DHCP, NAT, and DNS (forwards requests) for it's clients. Therefore, both wireless signals would be considered separate network segments. What matters is how the two are physically AND logically connected to the cable modem. That has been the center of this question I posed awhile back. If you daisy-chain these two WRT54G's and run NAT with both (defualt behavior), you are in for nothing but headaches. NAT'ing traffic that is already NAT'ed might work, but I introduces many more points of failure and blinds to obscure what is really happening.

So what's the dealy-o? How have you wired these two devices to the cable modem?

[jabrown]

sorry it been a while since my last response.
OK heres what i have

Internet ---(wired)---> modem ---(wired)---> wrt54g(ap1) ---(wired)--->wrt54g(ap2)

(I'm usuing (ap1) + (ap2) simply as a label for the 2 wrt54g's and not as a description to try and keep the confusion down)

The first wrt54g(ap1) is encrypted and is working fine both wirelessly and wired to the internet.
The second wrt54g(ap2)is wired from port 2 on (ap1) to the uplink port on (ap2).

Each wrt54g has 4 ports and an uplink port plus the wireless capability.

lets just forget about the wireless for a second and pretend that it doesn't exist.
because once i get the (ap2) working with a computer wired to it, the wireless will be easy.

Now with the two wrt54g's in the configuration mentioned at the top of this post when i try to get online (remember this is all getting put in place simply for internet access) i am able to get online for a few minutes then my access is gone. my computer says its connected, which it is, and there are no pop ups in the right hand corner of the screen saying anything has changed. The computer is still pulling a proper IP (assigned from ap2 which i set to be in 192.168.1.2xx range and ap1's IP are set to be in 192.168.1.1xx range).

Now linksys suggested i try disabling the DHCP on (ap2) but this had no change in the end
result. After that they told me this was beyond thier tech support. (Thank god for all the people here. People who actually care about networks)

I'll try and answer a few of your Q's now.

My ISP assigns one IP to either the computer or the first device connected to the modem.

They really could care less about how many computers are running through it.

My final intent with this is to have (ap1) used privately in the house by both residents. Then (ap2) will only be used when guest are over with their laptops. Kinda like a hot spot in a cafe.
Now i would just use one ap if i could be thier to set the guest computers up with the encryption but I won't and a lot of these people have trouble just finding the on button on thier computers.

As far as the laptop i'm using having trouble connecting because it's seeing both wireless connection and being confused. In the connection settings i set both connection points (ap1 + ap2) as manual so it won't connected unless i make it. the two ap's are about 25' apart so its not like they are to close and interefering with one another. Plus I set the channels to 1 and 11 respectively. there are no 2.4 ghz phones in the house.

[avdven]

You know what I'd do? I'd set up an 802.11a private network and an 802.11g public network. That way, your computers won't be confused since they work on two complete independently frequencies (you'd just need to make sure you have an 802.11a network card or a 802.11a/b/g combo card). Also, since few people actually use 802.11a outside of the workplace, you wouldn't really have to worry about people seeing it in the first place. I'd do the following:


Internet --> Modem --> Router -->
--> 802.11a WAP (encrypted, disable SSID broadcast, MAC filtering, etc.)
--> 802.11g WAP (open)

AJ

[jabrown]

i understand that. the wireless isnt really the issue. the issue is getting (ap2) to actually allow me to get on the internet more than two minutes when i'm hard wired. the wirless part is the easy part. Once i figure out what's causing (ap2) to have this issue then I'll start on the wireless.

The wrt54g s three devices in one ita a wireless access point, a four port switch and a router.
so forget about the wireless for a second. if i took two of these strait out of the box and disabled the wireless i should be able to daisy chain them (wired) and have the second device allow me to access the internet which is plugged into the uplink port on the first device. unfortunetly i'm not having that result.

After a while i thought one of them was bad so i plugged each one directly into the modem (individually) and tested each port and they both worked.


Thanks guys
still frustraded, J B

[Spyrus]

Originally posted here by zencoder
Actually, this wouldn't matter IF you have both APs configured properly, since both are NAT'ing any of their clients, they can have identical networking schemes. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

The WRT54G is Linksys' combo device...Router/Switch/Access Point. It does DHCP, NAT, and DNS (forwards requests) for it's clients. Therefore, both wireless signals would be considered separate network segments. What matters is how the two are physically AND logically connected to the cable modem. That has been the center of this question I posed awhile back. If you daisy-chain these two WRT54G's and run NAT with both (defualt behavior), you are in for nothing but headaches. NAT'ing traffic that is already NAT'ed might work, but I introduces many more points of failure and blinds to obscure what is really happening.

So what's the dealy-o? How have you wired these two devices to the cable modem?

What I was getting as was.... are both AP's the IP address 192.168.1.1... AFAIK you cant have both with the same IP address connected to the same network . That is why i brought it up. One should have a different IP than the other so that they don't collide and not work(but he has clarified that they are seperate IPs). Now that I think about it would it make more sense to disable DHCP and NAT on AP2 so that they arent both trying to hand out addresses.

Or could he just put AP2 in the DMZ of AP1 and then let it handle its own NAT but still disable DHCP on AP2? Or is this even more confusing

Edit:
When you had your PC connected to AP2, did you try to ping 192.168.1.1 (or whatever AP1's IP is?) did it work after you lost internet? what about when you try to ping 192.168.100.1 (this is your cable modem). Can you ping either one?
Also try putting AP2 in AP1's DMZ. I dont see how this could hurt anything other than port configurations should pass through AP1 easier.

[josby]

How about posting the IP, subnet mask, and default gateway for the PC and both sides of each router? It looks like there would be problems getting traffic from a 192.168.1.2xx IP to a 192.168.1.1xx IP on another subnet if you used the typical 255.255.255.0 subnet mask. I'm not sure how that would cause it to work and then stop, though.

Also, unless you reverse them, I don't see the point in doing this. Traffic from your unsecured network will just be another node on your secured LAN. Aside from issues related to NAT, hosts on the unsecured network will have the same connectivity to the hosts on your secured network as if they were also directly on the secured network.