How to use my router as a switch ONLY

[Joemonkey]

I'm going to a friend's house to LAN tonite, and my dumb ass lost my switch somewhere

I was hoping to bring my Compaq CP-2W or D-Link DI-704P over there and JUST use it as a switch

They currently have a cable modem going into a router that is using DHCP, that in turn goes to a computer upstairs and a switch upstairs. From the switch they have a cable that goes to another computer upstairs, and 2 cables that go downstairs. One of the cables going downstairs goes to a computer, the other goes nowhere (its the one i normally use when i'm over there)

This time my wife will be going over there (i recently got her into playing warcraft III, and she wants to come up and LAN with us 😀 )

SO, long story short, i need to figure out a way to have the straight through cable that goes downstairs go into a port on one of my routers and have 2 cables come out from it go to 2 other computers, and i need those 2 computers to grab their DHCP addresses from the existing router already on their LAN

any easy way to make one of those routers act like a switch ONLY?

 

[Joemonkey]

after searching through some archived messages, it seems i CAN do it, but i'm a bit cloudy on how

the CP-2W is a wireless router w/ 4 ethernet ports on it. I am simply using it as an access point at the moment, so DHCP is disabled. Right now i have a crossover cable going from it to my D-Link, and the cable is just plugged into regular ports, no WAN or uplink.

I'm able to use it as a switch this way!

But the problem that remains is this: the cable going from the D-Link to the Compaq is a crossover cable. The cable going from upstairs to downstairs at my friend's house is a straight through cable.

I really don't want to have to snip the end off and make it a crossover, then when i leave snip it off again and make it a straight through. Any ideas?

 

[Joemonkey]

well crap, looks like teh ONLY way to do it is run the crossover cable from router 1 to router 2, no way to do it with straight through

i guess i'll make a crossover cable that will go from the socket in the wall to a port on the CP-2W and then have 2 straight through cables going from other ports to computers

yet more proof that if you have your ideas typed out where you can look at them, you can figure it out yourself sometimes!

 

[Buddha Bart]

two things:

1.) does your switch have an "uplink" port? uplink is the logical equivilant of "crossover the cable that gets plugged in here"

2.) you can go buy or make a short piece of crossover cable, and an rj45 coupler. That way you can add your little coupler+crossover to the end of any regular patch cable and make it a crossover.

bart

 

[JackMDS]

The Content of the Following Link Might Help:

How do I use a Wireless Cable/DSL Router as a Switch with an Access Point?