Just a follow up if anyone is reading this thread.... changing a
wireless router to an access point was a piece of cake... turns out all
you have to do is make the connection using the LAN ports on both the
router and the wireless router. Turn off the DHCP server and set it up
to get its own address via DHCP. The only weird thing that I ran into
was that the wired router didn't seem to pay attention to the IP issue
for the routers. It issued one ok, but nothing showed up on the DHCP
table. At first I though this was odd, but ok, but then it appeared
that the DHCP server issued the same IP again to one of my computers...
not good. I flipped the method to be static IP and put one in and all
is well; at least on the DLink. The Linksys complained that I could
not assign an IP from the same segment on both the WAN and LAN side...
funny, that was ok when the DHCP server was dishing it out. Played
around with the assign range to force an IP in the low range for that
router and then bumped up the start number for the next IPs to be
issued. No the best solution in the world, but it is working for now.

Thanks for all of your help.

Bill

BCage wrote:
> Ahhhh... now it is starting to make sense. Thanks for the detailed
> replies. I am assuming that I can use one of my existing wireless
> routers and shut down everything so that I turn it into an access
> point. I will definitely keep WPA on the wireless, but your reply does
> make me think I might want to have a second subnet. Since the implied
> benefit there is that the two are kept at arms length, although, where
> I live there is little threat introduced by my wifi spillover.
>
> My guess is that if I set up a separate subnet this would prevent
> wireless connected users from using services (printers etc) on the
> other subnet; which is part of what I was hoping to have available.
> Would this impact the internet sharing capability?
>
> Bill
>
> Bill Kearney wrote:
> > > What I think I want is for the wireless router to employ a pass through
> > > DHCP call to the first router so that it is in effect, one network.
> > > Again, I am not well versed in this so it is a trial and error.
> > >
> > > Am I making this too complicated in my mind?
> >
> > Yes, sort of.
> >
> > You're on the right track regarding having one DHCP server if you're going
> > to have just one subnet. If you're using WPA security on the WiFi then it's
> > not unreasonable to use just one subnet. But if you're going to leave the
> > wifi unprotected it's a good idea NOT to have it on the same subnet. It's
> > OK to do this (assuming you want to share the wifi or something) but it's
> > not without adding configuration work.
> >
> > When you tack on wifi to a wired network the 'simplest' way to do it is as
> > an access point. That way it's just a connection, not a routing point. It
> > merely passes the DHCP packets onto the wired network. It's common to also
> > disable all server 'features' on the wifi router and let it operate just as
> > an access point. Then plug a wired connection from the existing network
> > into one of the LAN ports on the wifi router. This to avoid any features
> > that might depend on using the WAN port on the wifi router. This works
> > pretty well.
> >
> > > The question on hardware really was more about what someone might
> > > suggest given the goal of reliability. Just looking through the online
> > > descriptions of routers, I have seen some of the routers described as
> > > having QoS functionality... should I be looking for things like this?
> >
> > QoS is great, if you've got all devices involved supporting it. That
> > includes the uplink gear at your ISP. It's a way for higher priority
> > traffic to get passed through faster in the event of other activity. This
> > is important for stuff like voice over IP. But it's not going to be
> > terribly useful if your ISP isn't also supporting it. Sometimes the router
> > hardware will be better in order to support the features (more CPU speed,
> > ram, etc).
> >
> > -Bill Kearney