For brucejackson: Can daisy chained routers be in the same network?

[brucejackson]

I have the same problem as James, but none of the replies answers the question of daisy chaining routers.

I also have a very similar setup (,a single port ADSL modem, a 4 port router supporting a couple of desktops and a wireless 4 port router (also D-Link DI-624+) supporting another desktop, network printer and laptop).

The routers are daisy chained. but the computers on the first router can't see the devices plugged into the second.

I already have two routers, so I don't need another hub/switch. I just want all the computers to be able to see the printer and each other.
I just need to know which devices do NAT (network address translation) and which router should be the DCHP server and DNS. I'd like to see an example of a working configuration to get a better understanding.

Currently the modem does NAT and each router does it's own DCHP, assigning IP address to it's clients. If I set every device static IP addresses, would that work better than dynamic addressing?

Also the first router has an "uplink" port alongside it's WAN and 4 LAN ports. I can't see any reference to it in the documentation as to what it does or when to use it. Any clues?

Incidentally, I'm new to this forum.

[kc0arf]

Hello,

WAN means that your connection goes through the router's firewall / routing scheme, whereas the LAN ports imply that you are on the same subnet. In English, this means that if you wire your computers with the WAN port, you will need to configure the firewall and routing on the website, and if they all use the LAN port, the additional routing / layering will be bypassed.

I use the LAN ports all the time, except for the SINGLE connection to the cable modem / dsl line. And since I have Linux servers serving as my firewall points, I don't use the WAN ports period.

I am betting that you need a crossover cable between one LAN port and the other. Some hubs and switches have an UPLINK port; the latest generation of devices self-detect this particular condition.

Either case, as I am a visual fella... if you have access to a digital camera or a scanner, please draw a picture of what your network looks like, and lable it accordingly. Let's look and be sure we know what we are talking about.

Christian

[brucejackson]

Sorry about my wrongly placed posting DMR.

Thanks for the response.

I have since read several other posts and gleaned some insights. I have re-configured the network along the lines shown in this pen sketch following Christian's advice on using the LAN ports to connect the routers (no crossover, they are auto-detecting).

I've set up the wireless router and it's client devices with static addresses (all above the range of dynamic addresses assigned by the first router)
All have the same subnet mask and gateway of 192.168.1.1 (the first router's IP)

It works in that I can use the Internet from all computers. Shared files and the network printer is available to all computers including the laptop.
I have allowed for some addresses to be assigned dynamically in case my kid's friends come over with their computers for a LAN game (wired to first router)

Several questions:
1) I can't seem to specify MAC filtering for wireless connections when they are static IP and there is no DHCP serving done by the wireless router. Any suggestions?
2) Do I need to specify a DNS address in the TCP/IP settings on each computer (seems to work without it) and/or the routers?
3) should I use the uplink port (gives me another free port) instead of joining routers via the LAN ports?
4) could I let the second router assign DHCP dynamic addresses in the range of say 192.168.1.100 - 192.168.1.199
5) should the IP gateway on devices connected to the wireless router be set to 192.168.1.20 or as i currently have it 192.168.1.1?

[IMG]http://goldreverre.com/extra/P7285853.jpg[/IMG]

[alc6379]

First of all,

I'm not really familiar with MAC filtering, but I'm willing to bet that the MAC filtering done by the wireless router is simply denying a DHCP-lease to the system based on MAC addressing. The capability of giving or denying an IP Address based on MAC addressing is pretty basic to most DHCP servers.

Second, if the router that's doing the IP address assignment has the DNS information already, it will either give out the DNS server information to its clients, or it will act as the DNS server for your LAN. The only time you'd need to configure it is on hosts that have statically-assigned IP addresses, and they don't pull their DNS information from the DHCP server.

If you have an uplink port, use it. That way, you don't have to make a crossover cable. You'd plug the uplink port's cable into a regular port on the other switch/router.

a single broadcast domain should only have one DHCP server. If you need hosts to get DHCP addresses, simply allocate enough on the DHCP server. If you have advanced DHCP range assignment needs, you need to disable DHCP on both routers, and just use them as switches. Then, you'd want to run a "real" DHCP server, like dhcpd on Linux.

...and for question 5: Let's have an exercise in troubleshooting. Think about it. 192.168.1.1 is the gateway for the entire network, because it's the one with the Internet connection. Since nothing's connected to the WAN port on the wireless router, it's not so much a router, but a switch and Wireless Access Point. So, it's "dumb", essentially, the routing function going unused, for all intents and purposes.