Wi-Fi Router

[JK949]

My landlord has cable broadband. Here is the setup:
Upstairs in a utility closet there is a cable modem that is plugged into a 5 port router/switch
and cat5 cable routed to 5 rooms in the house both upstairs and downstairs all through
the walls to outlets in each room. The problem is that one room that was added on
after the fact is not wired. Is there a type of wi-fi router/access point that can be used
in between the cable modem and the 5 port router to broadcast a broadband signal
that can be picked up in the unwired room with a wi-fi adapter that I have already.
If will be used only for his daughters computer that I just built.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

um, why not REPLACE the normal router with the likes of a Linksys WRT54G??

 

[ktwebb]

Take sheiks advice or just buy an AP. It wouldn't be before the router however. It will be plugged into one of the routers LAN ports via Cat5 cable.

 

[JK949]

Dosent that router need to be connected to a computer ?
If not how would you install the software for it. There are five computers in five rooms.
Three of them belong to renters like myself. I was under the impression that wi-fi
routers had to be connected to a host computer, which there is not one setup in the
house. There are five cables going out to the five rooms and only five ports on the
lan router so there is not any extra ports to connect the wi-fi router to.

 

[JeffMD]

Well a problem arrises off the bat in that ive seen no 5 port wireless routers, they are all 4, so you will need a seperate router access point config. If you wanted to encorperate your current router, I would buy an access point and a switch. The access point will connect to one of the 5 points on the router (and all connections using the access point will get their IP from the dhcp server on the router). Plug the switch into one of the other 5 ports and then you can plug the 2 people you unplugged from the router into the switch. the switch will relay everythiong to the router as normal.

You can remove the access point and just use the switch if you feel you can easily wire a 6th cable to the new room too.

 

[JK949]

If I install an access point from the the cable modem and into the lan router will everbody
connected via wire to the lan router have the same speeds and all be able to go online at the same time
without having to setup and configure their computers to access the wireless access point ?

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: sheik124
um, why not REPLACE the normal router with the likes of a Linksys WRT54G??

I agree. I have a WRT54g and I can only say good things about it.

• Very stable, Linux-based OS, running 24/7/365
• Very fast, 200Mhz processor and 4MB/16MB memory (g) or 8MB/32MB (gs)
• 3rd-party firmware adds transmit power increase, lots of features and various hacks (upcoming Talisman release by Sveasoft will add Speedbooster support to most WRT54g models)

It sounds like you would need four physical ethernet ports which is what the WRT54g has built-in. You can add additional clients via wireless or with another uplinked switch.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: JK949
Dosent that router need to be connected to a computer ?
If not how would you install the software for it. There are five computers in five rooms.
Three of them belong to renters like myself. I was under the impression that wi-fi
routers had to be connected to a host computer, which there is not one setup in the
house. There are five cables going out to the five rooms and only five ports on the
lan router so there is not any extra ports to connect the wi-fi router to.

no routers work by themselves. if you need to access that one for install setup, connect it to a pc temporariliy, then assign ip different from other routers and then you can access remotely

 

[JK949]

I have a correction regarding the LAN ROUTER. It's not a router it's an SMC 10 port switch.
What do you folks think now as far as the wi-fi access point idea.