Simple repeater router question!

[ekuest]

hey guys, techincally minded here but know very little, so probably an easy solution that i just dont know how to solve. quick google didnt help either.

so my modem/router (combo unit from comcast) is in the very back of my house because that's where the cable wire comes in. i have an ethernet cable running to the front of my house which is plugged into my htpc for torrenting, netflix, etc. i want to install a repeater there (i have an excess E1000) in order to get a better signal on that side of the house. if i plug the ethernet cable into the "internet" port on the router, and my htpc into one of the four "internet" ports then i get internet on my htpc but cant see it on the network. if i plug the ethernet cable into one of the four "internet" ports then i can see my htpc on the network and stream video from it, but the htpc doesnt get internet!

how do i make it so my htpc gets internet AND can be seen on the network? note: i have not set up the wireless settings on the router yet so i may just need to set some setting to "repeater" or something...

 

[+Eric]

On the E1000 plug everything into the lan side.

Log into the E1000 and turn off DHCP first. This should be DHCP for the lan, it needs to be turned off.

You'll plug nothing into the Wan/Internet port on the E1000.

You can set up wireless however you like.

 

[ekuest]

ok cool. yeah it defaulted to "Automatic-DHCP". what do i change it to? static IP? everything is plugged into the lan side and i turned off DHCP and switched to static IP but still no internet. do i need to configure wireless settings for the lan internet connection to work? or maybe i need to change a setting on the modem/base router? thanks for your help by the way!

 

[ekuest]

well i cant get this to work at all. i tried turning DHCP and DHCP server off on the base router and also the repeater and still no internet on my htpc. can anyone help me figure this out? i can post screenshots of my settings pages if you guys tell me what to look for.

 

[hedron]

You don't want static IP. You want the HTPC to get its IP from your main router/modem, not the E1000. You want to disable DHCP server functionality (locally from the E1000 device), but enable DHCP "getting" functionality, so you get the IPs from your main router/modem. Does that make sense?

The way my router would be set up, is that you would stick the ethernet into the WAN port, and enable that for DHCP, and then the HTPC into the LAN port and make sure DHCP server is disabled.

I'm not familiar with the E1000 web interface and I can't say anything specific for that device.

if i plug the ethernet cable into the "internet" port on the router, and my htpc into one of the four "internet" ports then i get internet on my htpc but cant see it on the network.

See, I think you have it physically set up correctly here. But the problem is that you can't see it on the network because it's on a different subnet. You want to put both your main PC and your HTPC on the same subnet for more easy communication between them. Disabling DHCP server function on the E1000 should fix the problem. IMO... I could be wrong, I'm not the last word on this stuff.

Now that I'm thinking about it... maybe it does go in the LAN ports, because in the WAN port it would give the router an IP and you don't want that....so nm...it's last here on the east coast...

 

[ekuest]

ok so i realized from where you quoted me that i said "internet" and "internet" earlier when i meant to say "internet" and "ethernet". i will edit that so future readers dont get confused by my idiocy. so yeah i have the internet from my modem/router (motorola) into "ethernet" 1 on my router (linksys) and my htpc plugged into "ethernet" 2. i can connect to either motorola or linksys wirelessly.

ok so after i wrote out a bunch i tried something else and i think it worked! i set DHCP server on motorola to enabled, internet connection type on linksys to DHCP, and DHCP server on linksys to disabled. then i realized that the IP address for linksys was 192.168.1.1 and the DHCP settings for motorola said to start assigning IP addresses at 192.168.0.2. so i manually changed the IP address of linksys to 192.168.0.2 and now the ethernet seems to be working as well as the wireless.

i also changed the password for accessing the router to something else, but i cant seem to figure out how to change the user name, which is currently just "admin". oh well, enough victories for tonight, it's really time for bed. thanks for the help guys, you were right about it being the DHCP settings. i just didnt realize i had to manually set the IP address to get DHCP to work!

 

[+Eric]

Usually you can't change the username on consumer routers in my experience.

Internet connection type on the linksys is irrelevant. You don't really have an "internet" connection on your linksys as it's only acting as a lan switch and a wireless access point. Changing the DHCP server to disabled turns the DHCP server off so that your pc's get their IP's from the motorola. You should only have one DHCP server on your LAN.

As far as changing the IP of the linksys, that really only matters for being able to access the linksys from your network, but you're right it is something you should do. So long as that IP address (192.168.0.2) doesn't conflict with any other devices on your network and is not in the same IP range that the motorola DHCP is using.

 

[ekuest]

Usually you can't change the username on consumer routers in my experience.

yeah that seems to be the case on linksys, motorola let me change the ID.

Internet connection type on the linksys is irrelevant. You don't really have an "internet" connection on your linksys as it's only acting as a lan switch and a wireless access point. Changing the DHCP server to disabled turns the DHCP server off so that your pc's get their IP's from the motorola. You should only have one DHCP server on your LAN.

As far as changing the IP of the linksys, that really only matters for being able to access the linksys from your network, but you're right it is something you should do. So long as that IP address (192.168.0.2) doesn't conflict with any other devices on your network and is not in the same IP range that the motorola DHCP is using.

it's in the ranger the motorola is assigning to DHCP devices, so i assume it is right. doesnt seem to be conflicting with any other devices either. i can now use wired internet on the htpc, wireless from the linksys, and remote desktop/access files from the htpc over the network. case closed. thanks again!

 

[+Eric]

Just to be clear, you want the linksys to be outside the DHCP range of the server on the motorola.

So if the range on the motorola is 192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.100 then set it to something like 192.168.0.101. Otherwise the motorola may still assign 192.168.0.2 to another device and you'll have a problem.

 

[ekuest]

Just to be clear, you want the linksys to be outside the DHCP range of the server on the motorola.

So if the range on the motorola is 192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.100 then set it to something like 192.168.0.101. Otherwise the motorola may still assign 192.168.0.2 to another device and you'll have a problem.

oh ok. well maybe i can just adjust the range the motorola assigns from to start at 192.168.0.3. before i set the IP address manually, it was at 192.168.1.1 which didnt even get it internet, so i think it has to be in the DHCP range which is 192.168.0.2-192.168.0.50 or whatever. but i think i can adjust the range the motorola assigns from to start at 192.168.0.3 so that it doesnt create any conflicts. i dont see it happening anyway as my htpc is an always-on machine that is always plugged into linksys, but i will do that just to be safe.