Wired AND Wireless Home Network, Done Right?

NiGHTS

Hi all,

So I've currently set up the network in our house, but am unhappy with how it's been seemingly jerryrigged for the past year and would like to fix it. I've essentially got 2 seperate home networks running, 192.168.1.xxx for wireless, 192.168.0.xxx for wired - I would like wired devices to be able to talk to wireless ones.

Before I begin, things to note:

• The house is 3 stories
• The house is prewired for CAT-5
• Wireless does not transmit well to either third or first story

So, I've currently got the cable modem on the second floor and a router (192.168.0.xxx) hooked up to it. This router serves the rest of the house via wall jacks. One of those jacks has a wireless router hooked up (192.168.1.xxx) to service the house wirelessly. The remaining two jacks service 2 360s and 1 computer via a switch upstairs.

I'd like everything to be on the same "network" in the house, rather than split up as they are now. A good example of what I can't do is share media from the desktop computer to an xbox on the second story, since that xbox is plugged into the wireless router with an IP of 192.168.1.xxx, while the desktop has 192.168.0.xxx.

It sounds confusing, I know. I'd draw a picture, but I'm not sure that'd even help, it really has to be seen.

Internet
|
Cable Modem
|
Router - supports WAP on floor 2, switch on floor 3 (which supports 2x 360, desktop)
|
Wireless Access Point - floor 2 > supports 1x 360 > several laptops/phones


The location of the first router prohibits me from setting up the WAP there, since it isn't in an ideal location in the house and connection really suffers for it. If that weren't the case, I wouldn't have to run 2 IPs. I'd ideally like to use the wall jacks, since they're there and wired trumps wireless for everything.

Would buying a new Wireless-N router give me the bump in connectivity and signal strength over a 4 year old b/g router? This point may be useless, though, as all the wireless devices in the house are not N-ready.

Is there a way of setting up the WAP to use 192.168.0.xxx for wireless devices so they can "talk" to 192.168.0.xxx devices?

TIA

ardichoke

There should be a way to turn off the DHCP server on your wireless router. Do that. Then look for somewhere that you can set the wireless router to operate in "bridge" mode instead of router mode. If you tell it to act as a bridge and turn off the DHCP server, your wired router should handle all DHCP requests thus all wireless clients will be assigned a .0.* address and having the wireless router in bridge mode will have it pass all traffic back and forth untouched.

NiGHTS

I'd already turned the DHCP off on the WAP because they were fighting with one another originally, but it looks like neither router supports a bridge only mode on the stock firmware (figures).

Thanks, though.

ardichoke

What kind of wireless router are you using? You might be able to flash DD-WRT onto it (or some other 3rd party firmware) that will allow you to use bridge mode.

Oh, and bridge mode on the main router really wouldn't help you here, that one NEEDS to be an actual router. You need to have bridge mode on the WAP.

NiGHTS

WAP's a Netgear that doesn't support the firmware, unfortunately; I've already checked.

I'll continue using the setup as is and just find a workaround.

ardichoke

If you disable the firewall on the WAP you should be able to access everything on the two subnets without problems. Unless the WAP is doing something very strange with it's routing.

BlackHawk

Would buying a new Wireless-N router give me the bump in connectivity and signal strength over a 4 year old b/g router? This point may be useless, though, as all the wireless devices in the house are not N-ready.

In my experience 801.11n gives you more range but I think that depends on the router. I'm using a D-Link Gamerlounge (three antennas and they offer an external adapter) and the range in a reinforced concrete house increased.

Newegg has this Asus 802.11n for $50 and as a bonus DD-WRT's site reports that support for the router is WIP (some betas work with it).

You could get additional 802.11n cards for the computers that are farthest from the router.

mirage

This is my home network. I am posting the schematic here hoping that it might help you. All of the routers are running DD-WRT and everything is in on the same subnet. There is a Linksys WRT54G-TM at the center. Its radio is disabled and it is only acting as Gateway, Firewall, and the only DHCP server on my network besides keeping the stats of our network traffic and updating dynamic IP addresses. All of the network equipment in the blue region are at the basement. There is an additional Buffalo WHR-G300N upstairs working as a wireless client bridge to give faster network connection to PS3 (and any other PC that connects to it) over Ethernet. There are two wireless APs (i.e. WAN connections are disabled) in the basement connected to the WRT54G-TM over Ethernet. Asus RT-N12 is the main wireless AP working in N+G mode. The other wireless AP (WHR-G300N) is dedicated to the wireless bridge of PS3 for connecting to the media server. Other wireless PCs can also connect to this AP when there is a need to transfer large files between two PCs over the wireless network. These two wireless APs work on different SSIDs and on different channels not to share the bandwidth.

Until recently I was testing a Trendnet wireless N router in place of WRT54G and RT-N12. But it was not reliable. I had to go back to WRT54G and bought this ASUS-RT-N12 as the AP. This combination gave much better reliability.

I have no idea how could I have done the networking without the flexibility and power of DD-WRT. Besides having the consistency (more or less depending on the hardware) of interface and options is very useful.