We looked everything over closely, and found out why things hadn't been working. When I added the third PC in the corner, there was a piece of the tin metal (the part that covers the rear of the motherboard) that was sticking into the edge of where the CAT5 cable goes in. While it appeared to go in, the metal was evidently keeping it from going in quite all the way.
It turned out that we had an old Asus router on a shelf, and I've hooked that up to the 3 PC's instead of the switch, which has been retired. Of course, once I did that, I found myself wondering if I could just use the router's antenna to get the internet for the 1 pc on the network that we use for browsing, rather than using the USB wifi dongle that we currently use.
As soon as I powered on the router, a web page came up on one of the PC's, asking me which of 3 ways to set it up:
A) wireless router
B) repeater
C) access point
I have to admit, I'm really not sure which way to go! We don't really need this to 'extend' the wireless network, since it's just across the same room as the main router. Would it be called an 'access point', if we mostly want it to function as a wired lan, but to also take over the function of my usb wifi dongle that we use for internet access. I would just choose wireless router, but I really don't want it spending a bunch of its resources constantly looking for wireless devices that want to get on the network. In fact, it would be nice to tell it to only hook up wirelessly to our main router, which has the internet access hookup.
98% of the time, we just want it there to link the 3 computers into a tiny network, and to share the printer/scanner that is hooked up to one of them. The other 2% of the time, very occasionally, I'll hook up to the internet using a wifi dongle on the other 2, then load a few new Steam or Gog games. After that, I put away the wifi dongles for those 2 PC's. That way, I don't have to worry about the kids going to strange places and getting viruses, or having 3 kids on the internet wirelessly at the same time, which from experience, would likely interfere with our streaming TV watching downstairs.
So, if we have our cable internet, and our primary wifi router up on a shelf, and then these 3 computers hooked into another wifi router (using wires), then which would I select for the router that is not hooked up directly to our cable internet modem? Would it need to be set up as another router, a repeater, or an access point? I wouldn't mind for it to be used for internet on one of the computers, but the main use would be for a small wired network, printer sharing, and playing games over the wired LAN.
I REALLY appreciate any help you can offer so that I could get this thing up and running soon. My 11 year old would really, really like to see it working in the next few days, even if all it does is let them play Armagetron locally. (fantastic Tron Light Cycles game) Thanks!
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