Need help with weird network setup

[mechrock]

I'm living in an apartment with my friends this year. It's all inclusive so they supply the internet. (Using Charter I believe)
To connect to the internet they, have a modem/switch combo in 1 of the 4 bedrooms then 4 Ethernet cables go back into the wall for the 4 bedrooms or living room.

I have it setup with 3 of the bedrooms connected to Ethernet and 1 connected to the living room. I have a router in my room with the wireless turned off and I have a router in the living room with wireless turned on and to give my friend's Xbox 360 a wired connection.

Both routers work fine with respect to getting internet and connecting to devices on each individual router.
What I want to do is be able to have the routers talk to each other as if they were on the same network, the problem is I'm not sure what I need to change to get that accomplished. I've taken a networking class and I'm familiar with sub-nets and the likes, but that was awhile ago and I'm a little rusty besides the fact we never did much of hands on networking.

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[Fardringle]

On the "extra" routers in your room and in the living room, disable DHCP, then connect the wires from the central modem to LAN (not WAN/Internet) ports on those two routers. That will make them act as wireless access points instead of routers.

 

[VirtualLarry]

set the lan IPs of each of the APs to the same subnet as the main router too, but outside of its DHCP range.

 

[JackMDS]

Using Access Points or Wireless Cable/DSL Routers as a Switch with an Access Point - http://www.ezlan.net/router_AP.html


😎

 

[mechrock]

On the "extra" routers in your room and in the living room, disable DHCP, then connect the wires from the central modem to LAN (not WAN/Internet) ports on those two routers. That will make them act as wireless access points instead of routers.

Wow, I feel stupid now... Still not 100% what I wanted, but it does work now to make a homegroup across the apartment and everything appears on the same network now.


Does security work well like this? What I was trying to do was still use the firewall in the routers and achieve this same feat.

 

[Mushkins]

Wow, I feel stupid now... Still not 100% what I wanted, but it does work now to make a homegroup across the apartment and everything appears on the same network now.


Does security work well like this? What I was trying to do was still use the firewall in the routers and achieve this same feat.

I'm unsure what you're trying to accomplish specifically. Without getting too technical, routers are the gateway device to a network. With two routers in the original setup, you created a network within a network, and typically a Double NAT situation. For a home setup you want one router, connected to your modem. If you need more ports to plug devices into internally you want a switch (in a pinch you can configure a router to act as a switch as described in previous posts).

From a security standpoint, your firewall is built into that router connected to the modem, protecting your network from the big bad outside world. It sounds like you also want to protect yourself from the other people on your network? To make any recommendations to that degree we'd need to know specifically what you're worried about.

 

[mechrock]

I'm unsure what you're trying to accomplish specifically. Without getting too technical, routers are the gateway device to a network. With two routers in the original setup, you created a network within a network, and typically a Double NAT situation. For a home setup you want one router, connected to your modem. If you need more ports to plug devices into internally you want a switch (in a pinch you can configure a router to act as a switch as described in previous posts).

From a security standpoint, your firewall is built into that router connected to the modem, protecting your network from the big bad outside world. It sounds like you also want to protect yourself from the other people on your network? To make any recommendations to that degree we'd need to know specifically what you're worried about.

The thing is, I don't think switch/modem combo has a firewall. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be susceptible to random attacks from the outside. The device s made by SMC networks.