TR Forums

Hi all,
I purchased a laptop for my wife, and decided to go wireless in the house. This is the wireless router we purchased:

http://www.officemax.com/technology/net ... t-ARS23830
D-Link DIR-615

So far it works great, and has fantastic range. It covers the entire house strongly and out in the yard a good distance. Of course we have no interference out in the sticks, so that helps.

My network topology is as follows:


However, in order to get my PC and her laptop to "talk" to each other via Windows 7 networking, I have to be plugged into the D-link rather in the DSL modem/gate. My PC is wired.

Now both the D-link and the DSL modem have firewalls, NAT, translation, etc. A lot of redundancy. I don't need that nonsense on the D-Link, I just need it to act as a "transparent" connection between the laptop and the DSL modem. How do I set this up, what should I look for in settings in the D-link?

There are two reasons I want this:
1. I don't need any more ping added to my gaming. Bad enough already.
2. I want to keep things simple to manage so I only need to concentrate on the DSL/Modem.

And yes, I have custom encryption and protection all set up already, not that it matters where I live.

Thanks
-Mark

I should write this up and sticky this as an FAQ.

Go in to the wireless router control panel and turn off the DHCP server, then plug the other router in to one of the LAN ports on the wireless router. Technically this should be a crossover cable, but with most routers these days they will do Auto-MDIX and do the crossover inside the router - as long as the link light comes on you are good. At this point your wireless router is now just acting like a wireless access point.

notfred wrote:

I should write this up and sticky this as an FAQ.

Go in to the wireless router control panel and turn off the DHCP server, then plug the other router in to one of the LAN ports on the wireless router. Technically this should be a crossover cable, but with most routers these days they will do Auto-MDIX and do the crossover inside the router - as long as the link light comes on you are good. At this point your wireless router is now just acting like a wireless access point.

We're doing this at work with some Linksys routers. Disabling DHCP prevents your PC and laptop from getting network settings from the Dlink, and plugging the DSL modem's internal port into the Dlink's internal just turns the Dlink into a switch, with a wireless AP built in.

Interestingly, it is usually WAY cheaper to buy a wireless router and use it as an AP than it is to buy a wireless AP.

notfred wrote:

I should write this up and sticky this as an FAQ.

Would you be interested in a general home networking FAQ? This question pops up about once a week on the SNB forums, so we already have writeups for several topics.

In my defense, I did a quick search here and came up empty. For some of us, we don't even know the keywords to search, although I do know enough to be dangerous (like I had assumed DHCP had something to do with it). The large part of it is there is a daunting number of settings in the Dlink to fart around with, and I could spend the next several weeks trying to sort it out if not for you guys.

At the end I would know a lot more, but frankly, I have enough on my plate, and I desire to be fed by a spoon

-Thanks

Mark

Contingency wrote:

notfred wrote:

I should write this up and sticky this as an FAQ.

Would you be interested in a general home networking FAQ? This question pops up about once a week on the SNB forums, so we already have writeups for several topics.

Yes, might be a good idea to do a general one and link to writeups others have done such as that one.

Hate to tell ya, but I have been struggling with this all night. Not working quite as expected. However I think I finally got it... several resets later. At least the guide got me started, but there was plenty else I had to fart with.

So my big mistakes last night were:

When I changed the DHCP address range of the LAN router, my cached password was lost, and I couldn't remember what I set the SOB to. Forced me to wipe-reset the DSL gateway.

When I changed the IP address of the WAP interface, I must have moved it outside of the mask by accident and I couldn't get to it anymore. I don't know how I managed that one. Took a long time to figure this one out. Wipe-reset, wipe-reset, long reset-powerdown-powerup-wipe-reset. The 10-second reset option didn't fully wipe settings until I power-cycled the unit too since it seems the WAN-side didn't release the unknown IP address after a simple reset cycle.

The WAP device apparently needed to release the IP from the WAN-side port before it would forward DHCP information between LAN ports, even when it was unconnected. This means you can have no wire attached to the WAN port, and you have to go into the management console and find the "release" button. This was independent of turning the local DHCP server off. Once this "Magic" was performed, DHCP from the LAN started passing through. Otherwise to get the wireless devices to work, I had to assign manual IPs.

Anyhow, it is working now, and the "n" two-antenna system works absolutely great! Full power from the basement on one side of the house, up two stories into my office on the other side. Makes roughly 5 floors/walls total to pass through. The last time I experienced wireless (several years ago) it barely made it through a single wall.

-Mark