{"id":1015,"date":"2013-12-01T19:29:30","date_gmt":"2013-12-01T23:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/?p=1015"},"modified":"2013-12-02T15:51:26","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T19:51:26","slug":"dd-wrt-making-two-routers-work-on-the-same-network-and-an-alternate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/?p=1015","title":{"rendered":"DD-WRT: Making two-routers work on the same network… and an alternate"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently moved and had to setup a new home network. Because of the length and number of walls limiting effective radio coverage in\u00a0the new house, I opted to put in two wireless AP’s: one at the front in the living room where the main input is, and one at the back of the house (about 70 feet away). I needed to connect the remote router to the network, on the same subnet. \u00a0Both of the devices use DD-WRT. \u00a0The type of network I am decribing is documented on the DD-WRT wiki here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The DD-WRT forums had a number of discussions about the difficulty various people have had doing this. \u00a0I use two Rosewill RNX-N300RT routers with DD-WRT\u00a0v24-sp2 (03\/25\/13) std – build 21061 installed. \u00a0In the network, one is connected to the WAN (the ISP access). \u00a0This is the primary router, where all the NAT occurs. \u00a0It operates it’s wireless LAN (WLAN) with a unique SSID on a specific channel. \u00a0The address of this router is 192.168.1.1<\/p>\n

The secondary router has no WAN connection, and it also operates its WLAN with a unique SSID on a specific channel. \u00a0Both wireless access points use WPA2 for security. \u00a0Connecting the two routers is a straight Cat5e cable running under the floorboards for a full 75-feet, connected to one of the four LAN ports on each end. \u00a0The address of this router is 192.168.1.2, set as a static address in the secondary router, with the gateway set to 192.168.1.1 to forward all non-subnet traffic to the primary router.<\/p>\n

This setup has been quite successful. \u00a0The trick to this is to simply setup the second router as described in this document, and most importantly, use the version of the software above \u00a0or a later. \u00a0The previous build of DD-WRT I was using (19xxx) would not work properly in the secondary router no matter what I did. \u00a0Build 21061 worked perfectly, when following the setup described on the DD-WRT Wiki page above.<\/p>\n

AND AN ALTERNATE…<\/p>\n

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I visited with some friends who were having similar issues, but the option of running a LAN cable to extend the network was not an option. \u00a0The network suffers from the same issue of trying to go through several walls over a 70+ foot distance, but the router and cable modem are located over a spot of earth, which blocks access to the basement.<\/p>\n

For this, I opted to go with a Linksys RE2000 network repeater. \u00a0I followed some advice to use the same manfacturer for the repeater as the existing router. \u00a0The network extender was easy to setup with the software provided, and it was placed in the corner of the living room. \u00a0That location is in the center of the house, and past the edge of the basement wall which enables radio-wave passage to the basement.<\/p>\n

Result: the wireless is now accessible from the entire house. \u00a0And the signal from the extender is strong enough to be picked up just outside the house on the patio. \u00a0This is an option I recommend, if you are not interested in stringing wires to extend your network. \u00a0Just be sure to match the manufacturer of the network extender to the manufacturer of the router.<\/p>\n

\":-)\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently moved and had to setup a new home network. Because of the length and number of walls limiting effective radio coverage in\u00a0the new house, I opted to put in two wireless AP’s: one at the front in the living room where the main input is, and one at the back of the house […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,13,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technologynetworking","category-technologythoughts","category-tips-and-tricks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1049,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions\/1049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}