converting a router to a switch?

[excalibur3]

I have a linksys wrt150N wireless N router and I would like to turn it into a switch. Said differently, I would like to set it up so that the network it is plugging into will assign ip addresses and everything. When I just simply turn off the assigning ip addresses in the router configuration, the computers hooked up to the computer just simply don't get an ip address. What else do I need to change to get this to work? Do I have to change the internet connection type to something else besides dhcp (like static?)? (I am at a university.) Thanks a lot for your help, I really appreciate it.

 

[Matthias99]

Just disable the internal DHCP server in the router and it should work. Make sure the connection from the wall goes to the 'WAN' or 'uplink' port on the router.

(I am at a university.)

They may be only assigning one IP per room/port. They may also be seeing the MAC address, and not assigning an IP since they know it is a router and they don't want you to have multiple computers.

Talk to your IT department and see what they have to say. While you may be able to work around this (with MAC address cloning, etc.) -- going against their IT policies is not a good idea.

 

[StopSign]

1. Connect your computer to the network. Write down the IP that's assigned to your computer.

2. Connect your computer to the Linksys and don't connect the Linksys to anything else right now.

3. Disable DHCP and firewall.

4. Set Linksys IP to the IP you wrote down. I'm assuming its default IP is 192.168.1.1?

5. From the wall, plug the cable into one of the LAN ports on your Linksys. DO NOT PLUG INTO THE WAN PORT. Reboot the Linksys.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
Talk to your IT department and see what they have to say. While you may be able to work around this (with MAC address cloning, etc.) -- going against their IT policies is not a good idea.

This is the best advice. If you're meant to be able to do it they'll help you, if not, you shouldn't be messing with the network.

 

[excalibur3]

That worked amazingly! Thank you all so much for your help!