Mouseover summary: I’m hooking up an old router to get another couple ethernet ports and it seems to work except that I can’t browse to anyplace.
Multiple searches didn’t find exactly what I’m running into.
Like lots of other people, I need a couple more ethernet ports on my router. Like some other people, I have a spare router that I should (theoretically) be able to use for this.* Like a few other people I found out how to hook it up. And it almost works! I’m hoping for a little nudge to get across the proverbial finish line (marked by a CAT 5 cable, of course.)
I will refer to my routers as #1 and #2. #1 is a Netgear router. I don’t remember–nor can I easily see-which model it is but that shouldn’t be germane to the discussion. It is hooked to my cable modem and is working fine. #2 is an older Netgear RP614 that doesn’t even have, or need, wireless. But it does have 100MBPS ports and that’s the one I want to use as a simple switch.
Here’s what I’ve done:
I went into #1 and changed its DHCP range from 1-255 to 1-250. Its address is 192.168.1.1.
I went into #2 and changed its IP address from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.1.251.
I re-booted #2 and re-connected a PC to it. Went into admin and turned off DHCP.
I connected #1 to #2–LAN ports on both.
I renew/released ipconfig on the PC connected to #2.
The PC can now browse to either #1’s admin page (192.168.1.1) or #2’s admin page (192.168.1.251.)
From the PC I can ping 204.104.5.198 and www.straightdope.com (or equivalents) and get responses. If I run ipconfig on the PC it says its gateway is 192.168.1.1.
BUT (you knew that was coming) from the PC I cannot browse to anything. If I enter an address it just says "waiting for (name.com) forever.
I’m so close. I can almost taste it. What have I not done properly or should I have done differently?
*=Let me forestall the semi-obvious question/solution of “Why don’t you just get a dedicated switch” by pointing out that I am not only too cheap to buy something else but I’m re-purposing what I have. Granted, this should have given me the necessary karma points to have it work, but I must have been bad somewhere else.
I think you overcomplicated this a bit. All you need to do is turn OFF dhcp on #2, connect one of the non-wan ports on #2 to one of the non-wan ports of #1 and you should be good to go (hurray for auto crossover) .
I realize you’re saving money by repurposing old gear, but routers can be a complete pain in the ass when all you want is their switch functions. Even if you turn off all routing and addressing, many still have to actively process the throughput, which can be a bottleneck (especially on a consumer-grade box) and muck things up by trying to do things like filtering and QoS sorting.
Did you also disable NAT or address sharing on router #2? It sounds like the routers are both trying to do nat which is going to cause you problems.
You may also want to manually configure router #2 to send all traffic beyond the local network (192.168.1, assuming a typical 255.255.255.0 subnet mask) to router #1’s IP address. Your devices won’t be able to communicate with each other on different routers, but that’s not possible unless router #2 has some setting that makes it simply act as a dumb switch.
NOT Required. You cannot even turn off NAT on the WAN on most cheapie routers… …When he connected the two switches together he created one LAN.
The routers have a switch on a chip inside them to handle the switch, the router’s CPU only get the packets for it… (EITHER the destination MAC address is set to the router, or to be a broadcast… a DHCP request is a broadcast… )
Having two DHCP servers one one LAN is wrong, the DHCP request might be answered by router #2 and configure the host for Router #2… in that case the gateway would be set to router #2, and hence the ethernet packets would be set to that of router #2, so the switch inside router #2 would hand it to router #2’s CPU … “Route this !”…
… but if DHCP is turned off, the DHCP must be answered by router #1…
so the gateway is router #1, and that sets the MAC address to be correct, router #2’s CPU won’t even see the packet.
So its one LAN. He tested that, its working just fine for DHCP server (router 1 answered DHCP), and for ping (can ping router 1 … router 2 didn’t clash IP address with Router or PC being tested.)
DNS worked (if DNS failed, then you could be worried about the TCP/IP stack going missing from Windows ,eg it used to go missing in Windows 95/98/XP… , or there’s a bad DNS setting, or the DNS cache client process crashed.)
Is there is a web proxy set in the web browser settings ??
Perhaps anti-virus or anti-spam is jammed up and not passing tcp/ip ?
But anyway try removing the network device from the device manager, and then let it add back in…
You say “hurray for auto crossover”, but if that sucker is really old, that may be the problem, right there. If it doesn’t have auto-crossover, OP would need a crossover cable, instead of a standard straight-thru.
After careful consideration of all the pertinent information above, Ixve still had no luck. Although the browser looks like it’s trying, I never get the page loaded.
So long as a PC is on #1 it works, but on #2, it doesn’t.
If I could find a cheap switch, I’d consider it but I hate to give up, and money is tight right now.
Have you considered using just the switch portion? The four or so jacks on the output side? Cross connect one of those to your existing switch or router’s output, and use the other 2-3-5 as extensions. In theory, the router/routing/NAT/etc. stuff should be irrelevant then.
I really can’t think of any reason why ping would work but a browser request wouldn’t.
Few things I would try, which may turn out to be pointless but I can’t think of anything else at the moment. All of them involve opening a cmd window on PC #2 and entering a command and seeing what it outputs. It’s easiest to copy text from a cmd windows by turning on “QuickEdit mode” (right-click on the cmd window title bar -> Properties -> Options -> check quickedit)
tracert www.google.com (this may show some very rough location information and/or your internet IP, if you’re not comfortable, redact as necessary or PM)
route print
telnet www.google.com 80 (describe EXACTLY what happens as best you can - press CTRL-C a few times if you get stuck in a blank screen)
partial answer to my own question: Perhaps small packets work but large packets don’t.
Perhaps there is a defective cable or socket ?
perhaps the switch is having problems, eg overheating ? maybe its running off the wrong power supply ?
maybe there are error counters on interfaces.
maybe he can test his computer closer to the main router, so as to be sure the computer doesn’t ANY problem… then blame the cable or router-as-a-switch
Except that he said he was able to visit the admin page of the router, it’s just internet sites he’s having trouble with. If it was a packet size issue, wouldn’t he also be unable to get to those pages?
I just got internet service for my new house which has almost every room wired for internet. I just have to connect all of the cables in the utility room to the new modem/router. Since I need more than the four outputs on the router, I thought that I’d just use my old router to do it. I read the start of this thread the other day, and just ordered a switch. I don’t need any more headaches at this point.
(Thanks for the hint about Telnet being disabled. I haven’t used it in quite a while, and not on this machine.)
So when I went to try these things, I found my internet was down. NO, it wasn’t down for the OP, but it was this morning. I reset my cable modem (and my routers, after) and–of course–I got a new IP address from my ISP.
And my problems went away! I’m not sure whether to be happy that things work now or sad that I don’t know what ended up fixing it. Happy that I don’t have to troubleshoot or sad that I don’t get to troubleshoot. Happy that I don’t owe arseNal a dinner or sad that I don’t get to buy one for him.
(Referring to a question by Amateur Barbarian
Yep. Exactly what I’d done. Otherwise I’d really deserve that dope slap.
Overall, though, problem solved and my thanks to all. Ignorance not really fought since I don’t know why it worked, but I’m just as happy that it’s working and I can move on to my next task. (Maybe it was just a bit of luck that mcgato wished!)
Yes, nothing magical about routers or IP.
All the ports on a home router except WAN are simply network switch ports.
The router only routes because it thinks the WAN port is a connection to another network AND the packet was addressed to it with an outside IP.
The DHCP info contains the default gateway address, so whatever DHCP info you pick up, that tells you where to send your out-of-LAN packets.
(Turn off DHCP on a router, and that router never gets a packet saying “forward me”)
If I saw a mess as the OP described, my tests would be
does browsing work in #1?
does browsing work in #1 if I unplug #2? (I.e. back to basic)
does email work?
PING is an ICMP packet, IIRC, which is a bit less complex a protocol than TCP/UDP IP packets.
My first thought from the description is “is your windows firewall on?” when one protocol works but not the other.
The confusing thing is that DNS (translate www.striaghtdope.com to an IP address) works, WTF? It’s possible the DNS was cached from before things messed up, in the router or the PC. it never hurts to pull a not-recently-used name out of the air - cnn.com, lego.com, dig.com, bbc.co.uk
Oh, well, glad it’s working. You did everything right.
If the router guts aren’t staying out of the way on switch signals, deep-six the POS. It’s not valuable enough to save for someday and it’s too crippled to try and repurpose.
