Connecting 2 wired networks together

[Crushyerbones]

Hello, I'm trying to set up something like this:

adsl-connected router -> standalone router
        |                |                |
Windows-XP PC  Windows Vista PC   Ubuntu Laptop

I'm doing this since I the 2 routers are far away from each other and there's only one ethernet cable going into my room, where I have the Vista and Ubuntu PCs. What configuration should I use? I've tryed setting the adsl one to use a bridge adapter and the standalone to be in bridge mode. They are both broadcasting dhcp. The only time I get network access is when I'm lucky and they both get ips from the adsl router for some reason. Turning off dhcp in the second router never worked.

I've also tried swapping the 2 routers and this particular configuration seems to be my most "lucky" guess so far. I have no idea what config options like multicast do so I've just been guessing so far. Can someone walk me through the process of connecting both routers?

[zeroth]

crush, you need to pick up a cheap switch and replace that second router...

[Crushyerbones]

I was hoping I wouldn't need to buy one. Is it the only way?

[zeroth]

just turn off dhcp in the second router and plug your ethernet cable from the first router into one of the 4 ports (not the internet port) - you're now bypassing the router - those 4 ports are a switch.

[OlyComputers]

You don't necessarily need to turn off DHCP and use it as a switch. I've daisy chained routers in certain situations (mainly temporarily while making network changes or to provide a wireless connection that's partially independent of a wired one) and the computers on the second router shoudl have internet connectivity as long as both routers aren't trying to use the same IP address. More complex file sharing would be difficult between systems on router one and router two, but anything on the same router will see each other and everything will have internet connectivity.

Make sure that the two routers aren't causing an IP conflict. Set router one to be 192.168.0.1 assigning the IP range 192.168.0.1-192.168.0.255 and router two to be 192.168.1.1 assigning the IP range 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.255 (You can use different IPs, these are just examples). This should keep them from conflicting with each other.

[Crushyerbones]

My main problem is that I'm having really strange glitches where internet access is just non-existent or really really slow, but I assume it's a problem with one of the routers, the newer one just doesn't seem to work properly even by itself and requires rebooting every day to maintain decent speeds. After switching them I even noticed the Windows-XP PC (which never had any problems with speed) started getting them too.

Thanks a lot for confirming my suspicions every one. It just goes to show that getting a cheap wireless router just isn't worth it.

PS: I did check the speed before buying them, before anyone asks