Extending LAN with a wireless router

[gloumer]

Hi folks,

I am trying to extend a LAN with a wireless router. I thought it would be possible just by plugging the ethernet cabel into my NETGEAR MR814V2 router. Well now I can access the router from the laptop through a wireless connection, but I can not ping any of the ip-addresses of the LAN.
Is there some additional configuration to be done? In one of the threads before, I saw somebody configuring the router as a dhcp client. However this LAN is not configured as DHCO, also my router asks for a static ip-address.
THanks for help, Gleb

 

[gloumer]

.

 

[bcastner]

. disable DHCP on the router
. plug into the uplink port on the router, not the WAN port, or use a cross-over cable.
An example:

http://www4.tomshardware.com/network/20030716/index.html

 

[gloumer]

Thanks that helped, removed the ethernet cabel from the internet port and plugged into the workstation port of the router.
Generally it works fine. However the internet connection through the router is much slower then through the ethernet cable.
I' ve been using the same router at home before and did not notice any difference in connection speed between etherenet and wireless there. However at home I only had 2 machines attached to the network.

Looking at the router configuration utility under "attached devices", I can now see 6 further machines attached to the router. These are from the existing LAN. Are the possibly using up the bandwidth? Is that normal, since these machines are connected through ethernet cables, not wireless.

Any ideas?

 

[bcastner]

. You did disable DHCP on the router, right?

No matter where the devices are identified, your internet bandwidth is being shared among 7 workstations. If you notice any slowness it stems from that fact alone.

One possible consideration is that if the broadband connection at work is DSL, you might want to adjust the MTU setting of the router and of your client. While most cable systems are fine with the Windows default setting of 1500 MTU, DSL needs a smaller MTU value, usually 1492.

Test the connection:

http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks

You can use the freeware DrTCP utility on the site to adjust the client MTU values. The router should have an MTU setting as well.

 

[gloumer]

I see, so how do companies with hundreds of workstations implement wireless. Do we need to install more router to work around the issue of bndwidth distribution between all the workstations in the network?

 

[bcastner]

Usually, usually, corporate policies about internet access that are signed annually by each user is sufficient.

Often, quite frankly, the usage by user is monitored. Depending on the site, there is a historical record kept of sites visited and bandwidth use.

To "shape" bandwidth, there are many utilities one can use at the router level.

For small sites, usually the abuser of the internet is well known to all. The guy running Kazaa, LimeWire, eDonkey, or a BitTorrent client should be well known.

Some things you can do:

. shut down the peer-2-peer abuser
. fire them. If you have an internet use policy in-place, you have legitimate cause;

. stop them. There are several ways. Google can help. One suggestion:

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk/p2pkiller.htm

. Bandwidth shaper tools for small workgroups.

http://www.netlimiter.com/

http://www.net-peeker.com/index.htm

http://www.bandwidthcontroller.com/