How should I connect these 3?

vashwood

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Dec 2, 2004
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Upstairs I have the Linksys WRT54G.

And downstairs I only had one gaming system, so I was using the Netgear WGE111 wireless gaming adapter just fine.

Now, I got another gaming system. I was thinking of using my old Netgear MR814V2 as a hub by turning off the DHCP and wireless.

I want both gaming systems to be able to access the same network. So I tried plugging in the WGE111 into one of the 1-4 ports. But it doesn't seem to be working.

Am I missing anything?
 

Madwand1

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Jan 23, 2006
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Well, it's possible that you messed up the router configuration -- were you using only the LAN ports? Try connecting only the original device via the old MR814V2 to see if the router's setup is OK. I.e. one LAN port on the router connects to the gaming, and another LAN port connects to the gaming system.

Beyond that, it seems that the WGE111 means "one, one, one", and no more devices unfortunately. From the manual:

"Note: The WGE111 can be used as a wireless game adapter with one machine only and does not support multiple devices"

The WGPS606, which is available cheaply on eBay/refurb sales, does support multiple devices behind its wireless bridge, though only up to WPA.

Another alternative, depending on the revision, might be to flash the Linksys with DD-WRT and set it up as a client mode bridge, and use the old Netgear or some other router as the main router.

WRT54G's before version 5 have more RAM and flash RAM than later ones. Versions 5 and later also have less and trickier support with third-party firmware. The WRT54GL is an exception -- it's basically a version 4 WRT54G, and so is a safer bet among new devices.
 

vashwood

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Dec 2, 2004
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Damn. you're right. i tried plugging in the mr814v2 straight into the linksys. and it works.
 

vashwood

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Dec 2, 2004
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Madwand1

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Jan 23, 2006
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Originally posted by: vashwood
"The way to fool the WGE111 to support more than one wired client is to put the wired systems behind a small NAT gateway router."

That's a good idea -- it means instead of using a simple switch behind the bridge (the most common configuration), trying a router set up as an ordinary router. I.e. using the WAN port to connect to the bridge, with DHCP enabled, and using DHCP also as the Internet connection type on the router.

The best way to see further consequences is to simply try it out.
 

vashwood

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Dec 2, 2004
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It does work. Only problem is the network on the 2nd router cannot access the network on the first router. I want my xbox to access my media on my laptop.

In the last link I pasted what does the person mean in the very last post?
"Using the uplink of the second, if you have netbios over tcp enabled you can access the the 1 st router's ip addrees ..you not browse for them but by using \\192.168.x.x you access them.."
 

Madwand1

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Jan 23, 2006
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Because of the NAT/firewall in the router, name resolution to the first local network won't work by default. So if you want to access your desktop through the bridge, you'll have to find its IP and use that.

E.g. From the desktop, named "mydesktop" for example, run:

ping mydesktop

This give you the IP of desktop.

E.g. it's 192.168.2.1, and the share you want to access is called "myshare"

Then across the bridge, you should be able to access the share as:

\\192.168.2.1\myshare
 

vashwood

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Dec 2, 2004
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Is there another setting I have to do? Because that didn't work.
Here's my seup. I've just changed the IP address to match. I'm not sure what additional setting I should use for the 2nd router. For the basic settings under the 2nd router, I put 'no' under "need internet connection"

First Router: 192.168.1.1
Desktop: 192.168.1.104
Bridge: 192.168.1.3
2nd Router: 192.168.1.2
Xbox: 192.168.1.10

Desktop <= First Router =>Bridge => 2nd Router => Xbox
 

Madwand1

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Jan 23, 2006
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Try a subnet different from the 1st router for the 2nd router, e.g. 192.168.2.1 for its local IP, 192.168.2.100... for its DHCP range (hence the XBox).
 

vashwood

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Dec 2, 2004
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Thanks. That did the trick. The XBOX can communicate with my desktop. Only thing I noticed is that my desktop can't communicate with the xbox though. I can't FTP into it.

Any ideas? Or do I have to just live w/ it?
 

Madwand1

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Jan 23, 2006
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Originally posted by: vashwood
Only thing I noticed is that my desktop can't communicate with the xbox though. I can't FTP into it.

That's normal because of the NAT/firewall. You could try port-forwarding / DMZ as you do for getting access through Internet to your home computers. I.e. set up port-forwarding for ftp to the destination machine, and then access that by trying to ftp into your router on the network1 side. Note that for this, you have to determine the WAN-side IP of the router (i.e. what's assigned to it via DHCP from the main router). You should be able to see this information on the second router's status page for example.