Help setting up a tricky home topology

[VonMeister]

I have a company laptop that I need to hook to my network. It requires a wired port with DHCP (no wireless). My network is setup like this...

Cable Modem ----> Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router ----> Linksys BEFSR41 Router

Wireless and wired clients with Fixed IP connect to the WRT54G
Wired work laptop uses DHCP and connects to the BEFSR41

The second linksys is setup in a second private network (10.10.*.*) with with a fixed IP address on the WAN side and DHCP on the LAN side which allows the laptop client to connect with VPN, etc. The problem is of course that it's wired and so I can't use it elsewhere in the house. I'd like to set up a remote access point that I can plug the laptop into but that would communicate with the wired network.

I think the easy way to do all of this would be to dump my fixed IP network and just DHCP everything and then use a wireless access point, but I have good reasons for wanting to keep a fixed IP network. Another alternative might be to replace the BEFSR31 router with a wireless router and remote wireless access point that would DHCP through the wireless router.

Do I have any other options here? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
VM

 

[skyking]

you might want to try WDS with a second wrt54g.
follow the 5th post down.

I have that working with three wired and one wireless client on the remote router.

Regarding static IP's. They can coexist quite happily in a DHCP enviroment.
Set the DHCP server to hand out addresses from .100 to .149, for example. that is the default behavior in many routers.
You can use everything from .3 to .99 for static IP assignments.
In the setup above, I have a couple of servers with static assignments in the master router. This is not really necessary, but possible with the sveasoft satori firmware.
When I take a look at the DHCP clients table, the servers are listed as having 6710 day leases

 

[VonMeister]

Originally posted by: skyking
you might want to try WDS with a second wrt54g.
follow the 5th post down.
I have that working with three wired and one wireless client on the remote router.

Hmmm... I guess I'd like to try and do this w/o messing with the firmware. But if that's what I have to do...

Regarding static IP's. They can coexist quite happily in a DHCP enviroment.
Set the DHCP server to hand out addresses from .100 to .149, for example. that is the default behavior in many routers. You can use everything from .3 to .99 for static IP assignments.

Huh. I didn't know that. I'll give that a try. I should be able to do that with the Linksys firmware, right? If I can have DHCP actually working on the wireless, then an access point would do the trick for my wired DHCP issue, wouldn't it?

As far as network equipment goes, I can also mess around with some Netgear stuff as I picked some up on the cheap with rebates and whatnot to see if I could get my network set up the way I wanted it. I've got their Wireless G router and the wireless access point (for a total outlay of $30 after rebates and whatnot, so I figured that would be worth it for some experimentation).

Thanks,
VM

 

[skyking]

Sure thing. the static/dhcp client thing will work with any network.
You can absolutely get it going with other hardware. I only suggested the wrt54g/firmware/WDS thing because you are halfway there.

 

[VonMeister]

SCORE! After struggling with the access point last night, I got it up and working! The key information was being able to set up both Static IP and DHCP on the same router. The access point, in wireless point-to-point bridge mode, happily allowed my laptop to grab an IP address and all is working very well. Plus I no longer need the extra router in network, so that's a plus too.

Thanks for your help! I was close, but needed that little tidbit of info to get me over the hump.

-VM