2 Routers via ethernet

[Pochbarone]

Hi, let me try to explain my project here:


I have a router on the 2nd floor in my house. This covers all the bedrooms perfectly plus some ethernet connections. Still, since my house is made of concrete walls, the signal on the 1st floor dining room and living room is not good. Since i have a huge TV downstairs in the living room with my PS3 and such, I wanted to connect my PS3 and HDTV to internet via ethernet.
I made the calculations and 25 meters of cable should work. Instead of dropping 2 cables of 25 meters for the TV and the PS3, I was thinking of only dropping one cable, connect it to another router downstairs, get 2 shorter ethernet cables for the PS3 and TV, and in the process, make the signal downstairs stronger.

My question is (finally xD), how do you sync via ethernet, two routers, to work on the same signal? My goal is to make the 2nd router, an extension of the first one.
Thanks a bunch

[Cadet]

hi Pochbarone,

Now i am no expert on networking (should be as i am about to finally finish off wiring my own house after 2 years)

Sounds to me like you just want a simple "switch" downstairs rather than a router.

a switch should just plug in without any need for configuration and do exactly what you want.

saying that you will also be able to do it with a router too without too many issues.

Hopefully someone will come along with a more precise answer

[Fail Whale]

the easiest way of doing this will be as suggested by cadet to basicly use just the switching functionality of the Router. The method to do this will vary depending on the router you are using but the general idea is you want to set the internal interface on the router to have an IP on the same subnet as the rest of your network.

As an example if you are using a 10.0.0.0/24 network then your current router will be something like 10.0.0.1 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and your networked devices will have other addresses between 10.0.0.2 and 10.0.0.254. In this case you will need to set the address of the router to any free address in the range although I would suggest using the highest and lowest addresses for the routers so one will be 10.0.0.1 and the other is 10.0.0.254.

Another thing you will have to check is if you are using DHCP on the primary router (to pass out IP addresses automaticly to devices on your network) you will need to add reservations in to the scope for the address you use for the Routers.

[Fearless_Shultz]

Hi Pochbarone,

You might also want to consider something like this

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/default_...61&Alt=Yes

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/Pag...TextID=532

In particular, this saves you the 25 metres of cat 5 that you mentioned... I know of a few people that use ethernet via electrical sockets and find it to work well.

[Pochbarone]

Great ideas! Thanks a bunch! I'll let you guys know what I went for in the end.