I want to add more ethernet ports to my home network in addition to keeping my WRT54G (Linksys wireless access point). Do I need a hub or a switch and how would I configure the WRT54G to properly handle the additional connections? My setup is, cable router -> WRT54G with 4 ports used for my lan lines. Any help is much appreciated! Thanks!
Do I Need A Hub Or A Switch To Extend My Home Network And How Do I Do It With A Linksys Wrt54g Wireless Access?
Sun, Oct 11, 2009
3 Responses to “Do I Need A Hub Or A Switch To Extend My Home Network And How Do I Do It With A Linksys Wrt54g Wireless Access?”
October 11th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
The easiest solution is to just buy another router and plug it into your WRT54G. If it’s a standard 4 port router, like your current router, that will give you an extra 3 ports. Any router will work.
You may need to go into the settings of the new router and change the IP address so that you do not duplicate IP addresses. For example, most routers default to 192.168.1.1, just change the second to 192.168.1.2. The option should be easy to spot once you log into the router’s options.
Hubs and switches are typically more expensive and more complicated to setup properly. Adding another router is plug and play.
If you are interested in improving your wireless signal in another part of your house, you can add another WRT54G in a distant location and follow the steps in this posting: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/20508-…
October 11th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
An ethernet switch would work just fine.
5 porthttp://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-GS105-ProS…http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as…
8 porthttp://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=…
No configuration necessary, just run an ethernet cable from one of the ports on your router to the switch and the router will automatically provide additional IP’s to the switch.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
You would not want to use a Hub, because that is just a “dumb” repeater/broadcaster type of connection, and what you want is a smart router type of thing. A switch is the way to go, or another router.
Basically, you can split up your network.
Cable Modem (it’s not a router) -> WRT45G -> 4 Connections (we’ll call them A1 through A4).
ConA1: PC
ConA2: PC
ConA3: PC
ConA4: Another Router that splits in to X more (where X is the number of ports on that router), called B1 through BX…
– ConB1: PC
– ConB2: PC
– ConBX: etc, etc…
You’d have to configure your 2nd router to be on a different IP address range. By default your first router will probably be using 192.168.1.1. You’d have to configure your 2nd router to use a non-standard IP address (by hooking it up without the other router at first and reconfiguring it before putting it on the network “at large”). You could simply set it up as 192.168.1.2 so its own IP is on the first router’s subnet, and tell it to assign IP address in the 192.168.2.x subnet, with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0
This way all computers connected to router 1 (including those on the wireless) would have IP addresses in the 192.168.1.* range, and all computers on the 2nd router would have 192.168.2.*
So your network would look like this:
192.168.1.1 = Router A
192.168.1.2 = Router B connected to Router A
192.168.1.101 = Lowest IP assigned to computers on Router A using DHCP
192.168.1.150 = Highest IP assigned to computers on Router A using DHCP (most Linksys routers come pre-configured to have an address range of 50, starting at 101 or 100).
192.168.2.101 = Lowest DHCP IP on Router B.
192.168.2.150 = Highest DHCP IP on Router B.