I just switched TV providers, and the new DVR is a Tivo. I have two TVs in my house, so there’s the Tivo box and a Mini Tivo. It took the tech like an hour to install it because he says the Mini Tivo has an issue with the way I had my network set up.
Here is how it was: cable comes from the pole into my garage. Cable plugs into modem. Ethernet leaves modem, runs around to a utility closet. Inside the closet, the Ethernet goes into a $10 switch. Plugged into that switch are like three other Ethernet cables that run through the walls of the house into the office, bedroom, and the living room. In the office, the Ethernet cable was then plugged into a wireless router to provide WiFi to the house. (A few other random things were also joined to the router with Ethernet.)
As I said, this setup did not allow the Mini Tivo to work because there’s a known issue with using a switch directly out of the modem. Or so I’m told.
Here is how it is now: cable goes into modem. Ethernet goes out of modem into the router, which is now in the closet. Ethernet to the three other rooms are plugged into router. Office now has the switch.
Mini Tivo works, but now WiFi signal in some areas of the home are crap.
So… I’m wondering about getting a cheap WiFi router and putting it in the closet, knowing the signal will rarely be used, and plugging in all the other rooms to that router. Then, move the good router to its old location.
Is this a good plan? Any special things I need to pay attention to if I have two WiFi routers set up like this? Do you have a better suggestion?
Again, explain it like I’m five, please.
It’s kind of surprising your first system ever worked.
The issue is routing - your modem provides a single IP address, which is only supposed to be used for a single device.
If you have more than one device (you do), then you need a router to assign and manage the IP addresses of all the devices (wired and wireless) on your network. The router then takes care of sharing the single IP address received from the modem to all of your devices.
If you add another router, you need to be careful not to have it distribute IP addresses in the same range as the first router. You can do this by turning off it’s routing functions, making it just a wireless extender (endpoint), or you can tell it to assign addresses in a different range from the first router.
Beowulff is correct. What you basically want is to add a wireless access point in your office. Most wireless routers will allow you to configure them as WAPs by turning off the DHCP service. (This is the service that assigns IP addresses on your network. You want your original router in the closet to handle this chore.) Just get any wifi router and follow the instructions to use it as a WAP and you should be fine. (This assumes you have the other wifi router in the closet.)
In my house, my AT&T U-Verse router (with wifi) provides the DHCP service. It sits on a desk at one end of the house. The ports on it serve the adjacent desktop computer and two data switches wired in other parts of the house. On one of the switches, I have a D-Link wifi router configured for WAP. This gives me two separate wifi sources that both use the DHCP service from the AT&T router. Problem solved. The whole network uses the same range of IP addresses and is transparent to all devices.
Thanks - I’m reading up on that right now and the instructions on doing it look straightforward. I’m heading to the store now to get another router and see how this all works out!
Make sure your WAP IP address doesn’t conflict with your router’s address. Out of the box, both will likely be assigned 192.168.1.1
Did you also need to change modems when you switched TV providers? If so could the old modem have also been a router? If not, then I don’t see how it could have worked either. Then again, my IT tech support son can’t figure out how I made our home network work either.
I set things up this afternoon, and the TP Link routers made this very easy. There were specific instructions on setting up a second router as an access point, and all is well.
Problem solved.
Depending on how old your network gear is, start thinking about home mesh networks.
With those you get a set of two or three boxes in a kit that you put in different places around the house, and they are smart enough to do all of the routing stuff behind the scenes and you get great wifi coverage throughout your house. They are not cheap, but they work very smoothly and come with management tools that are so much easier to use than the old-school web interfaces from 15-year-old routers.
Of course, this is not necessary today, but it is a good direction to go in if you want to have flawless wifi coverage everywhere in your house.