Overly Complicated Home Network

[LordFortius]

Ok. I'm going to start this off with a brief summary of my home networking experiences so far.

About 4 months ago, I decided to network my Desktop and Laptop together. Since I wanted the ability to roam around my house w/o cables, I decided to go with wireless ethernet. I ended up getting the 3com wireless gateway, hooking up the cable modem to the WAN port, the desktop to the built in switch via ethernet, and of course getting a wireless ethernet pc card for the laptop. Anyway, everything comes together nicely, but after a month I realize that 3com's gateway doesn't allow port mapping. So, if I ever want to host an online game, or an ftp server, I am pretty much screwed.

Present:

I have finally decided I want to do something about this stupid gateway keeping me from hosting stuff on the web, especially ftp. So, my basic plan is to buy another router, not too expensive, hook that up to the cable modem, then route to the wireless gateway which will be wirelessly connected to the laptop. The new router would also be connected to the desktop, and possibly another older computer that I have upstairs and would use to serve an ftp. I have a couple questions on how to go about doing this:

1. What would be a good router to buy?
2. How would I go about connecting the WAN port of the wireless gateway to the regular router, so that I could get internet access for the laptop? Or would I just hook the regular router up to one of the regular switched ports on the router? Or something else entirely?
3. The wireless gateway has its own DHCP server, with ip's going from 192.168.2.1 to 192.168.2.40. Would the laptop, which would be behind the gateway, be able to see the other two computers on the other router? Would I have to disable the DHCP server on the wireless gateway and give the laptop its own static private ip? Would I have to do the same for the other computers? Etc.

Any help would be appreciated. Also, I could use the addresses to some good resources on the net if anyone knows some.

 

[rawko]

1. What would be a good router to buy?
linksys

2. How would I go about connecting the WAN port of the wireless gateway to the regular router, so that I could get internet access for the laptop? Or would I just hook the regular router up to one of the regular switched ports on the router? Or something else entirely?
ditch the "regular router" and only get one linksys router

3. The wireless gateway has its own DHCP server, with ip's going from 192.168.2.1 to 192.168.2.40. Would the laptop, which would be behind the gateway, be able to see the other two computers on the other router? Would I have to disable the DHCP server on the wireless gateway and give the laptop its own static private ip? Would I have to do the same for the other computers? Etc.
Any computer behind the router can see each other. You can let any computer have a static private ip by just not using dhcp on that computer.

You COULD just get the linksys router and hook it up to your wireless gateway, and the computer. Then set the wireless gateway to dhcp and the laptop will work. Your normal pc could then take advantage of the port routing on the linksys router.