How do you connect two routers?

[Argitoth]

How do you connect two routers? Right now we have a 4xLAN linksys wire-only. We would like to get a new router to provide wireless as well as using the router we already have to provide additional access to the WAN.

How is this done? Or is there a better solution?

[The Damned]

You should be able to just plug in a network cable from one to the other. I'm not entirely sure, but that sounds right.

[Argitoth]

do you plug the router into another using WAN input or what?

[Legion303]

You could have figured this out by now strictly through trial and error.

I'm not giving you an answer, though, because it's a really bad idea to patch a wireless router into your home network unless you know what you're doing from a security standpoint.

-steve

[Argitoth]

You could have figured this out by now strictly through trial and error.

I only have one router at the moment.

[Legion303]

I only have one router at the moment.

My bad. I'll call Hooked on Phonics for a quick refresher course.

-steve

[Argitoth]

Lol, don't worry. Actually I spoke to Steve (my uncle) who happened to know a lot about networking. Funny how your name is steve also.

I know what I'm going to do.

[DarkeSword]

I just did this with my home network so here you go.

First things first: use the new wireless router as the primary router, and the wired one you have as the secondary router, because you want the wireless router to be running the DHCP server.

Only the router actually hooked up to the internet connection should be running the DHCP server, so go into your second router's setup and disable the DHCP server.

Change the second router's IP to something other than the IP for the first router. Most routers default to 192.168.0.1, so I suggest changing to to something like 192.168.0.25.

When you're connecting the routers together, you must connect them from one LAN port to another LAN port. You can not use the WAN port on the second router.

This means that if you are using two 4-port routers, you'll be left with 6 ports to use.

(actually, now that I think about it, it might not matter which router is primary and secondary, but whatever)

[Dhsu]

Wireless routers come with wired ports. Just get one with 4 of them.

[DarkeSword]

Wireless routers come with wired ports. Just get one with 4 of them.

No, he wants the additional ports of the wired router he already has. I can understand why; if you have a lot of desktops with wired ethernet, it helps to have some extras in case you need to hook up an external ethernet HD.

[Argitoth]

As a matter of fact I *am* going to buy a wireless router as we do need one for our laptop and at the same time there's no possible convenient way to use a wire for the laptop. Trust me on this one ;).