Adding a wireless router to an existing network.

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Edgar

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Added a wireless router to our office here so that people with laptops could get on the net without having to physically plug in. Right now it is ok, but the router is acting as it's own DHCP server instead of our server here assigning out the IP's.

The main gripe I have is I can only login to the router through my phone and not through my computer. How can I achieve this. We have multiple offices that all connect through a VPN. I would like our sys admin to access the router at his location as well.

Do I just turn off DHCP on the router and thats it? The model is Netgear WNDR4500.
 
depends on the router, turning off dhcp will do it though.
turning off the DNSMasq helps in certain situations as well
 
So if I turn off DHCP on the router and type in the ip address of the router on my computer I should be able to access then?
 
As Globox says, it depends on the router. Mine has a setting that allows it to operate in Access Point mode, so DHCP is disabled by default. When the router is running in AP mode, it will be given it's IP address by the DHCP on the network, so you'll need to have a way of finding out what the IP is.

Andy
 
andymac1966 said:
As Globox says, it depends on the router. Mine has a setting that allows it to operate in Access Point mode, so DHCP is disabled by default. When the router is running in AP mode, it will be given it's IP address by the DHCP on the network, so you'll need to have a way of finding out what the IP is.

Andy
Click to expand...

If it doesn't have this option then make sure you also set the AP's IP address to something other than your network's gateway. That is, if your network has the popular gateway of 192.168.1.1 makes sure the AP is 192.168.1.250 or something like that. A wireless router will often come out of the box with an IP of 1.1. I've seen this oversight cause intermittent issues on home networks before.

In the future you should be able to access the AP from anywhere on the network.
 
If it is physically connected to your network, uplink it via one of the lan ports, turn off DHCP, set the ssid and security to the same as your other unit, and put it on another channel. This should allow them to "float" between the waps.

Also if you want to manage it, put it on the same subnet and ensure it is not the same ip as another device.
 
Globox said:
change the ip on the first one to 192.168.2.0
Click to expand...

No just leave the first one alone, then set the other one to 192.168.1.2 ( close to the gateway )

So if he forgets at least its only one digit off. AND make sure you plug into one of the 4 ports NOT THE WAN PORT!

NOT THE YELLOW PORT :p

94%7C000023361%7Cefd0_WNDR4500-Back-HiRes-1-.jpg
 
Just a matter of preference, but I usually put my static'ed AP's outside of the assigned DHCP range. I once had a restaurant take it upon themselves to reboot their network gear and have all their wireless clients step on the static assignments of their POS system. I didn't define the original IP assignments, but trying to figure out the initial cause of the connectivity issues on top of all the IP conflicts was a chore. I've made it a point to reserve and use a static pool ever since.

As Dashpuppy said, making the AP 1.2 would make it quite easy to remember, but you may wish to consider redefining your DHCP range if it currently contains .2.
 
Didn't want to necro this thread but I have too. We just moved offices and I never go around to doing this until now. So this is just murdering my brain.

At first it was added to the network successfully. But the issue I was running into is that the internal wireless was working just fine. Laptops would be connected and the server would give it an IP through DHCP just fine. But when I enabled the guest network you cannot access the internet.

So I set it up as a wireless AP and had to put the ethernet in the WAN port. Everything worked BUT, the guest could access my local network which is a big no no. The option to uncheck that is greyed out and checked. So I cannot uncheck it.

This all started when our IP phones went down and they immediately came back up when I rebooted the wireless router. So I think I dun goofed and I updated the firmware to the latest thinking it would help prevent that from happening in the future. Now I'm just trying to get this like I wanted it to be 2 years ago. Same router.

Help is appreciated!
 
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I'm thinking now because I was logged into a company computer using the superuser account that is why I was able to access our local network. Crap. Now I gotta find a computer outside the network to test with.
 
EdGaRRRRR said:
Didn't want to necro this thread but I have too. We just moved offices and I never go around to doing this until now. So this is just murdering my brain.

At first it was added to the network successfully. But the issue I was running into is that the internal wireless was working just fine. Laptops would be connected and the server would give it an IP through DHCP just fine. But when I enabled the guest network you cannot access the internet.

So I set it up as a wireless AP and had to put the ethernet in the WAN port. Everything worked BUT, the guest could access my local network which is a big no no. The option to uncheck that is greyed out and checked. So I cannot uncheck it.

This all started when our IP phones went down and they immediately came back up when I rebooted the wireless router. So I think I dun goofed and I updated the firmware to the latest thinking it would help prevent that from happening in the future. Now I'm just trying to get this like I wanted it to be 2 years ago. Same router.

Help is appreciated!
Click to expand...

Guest WLAN networking on consumer grade routers only works correctly if the router is actually the gateway. The way it works is it only allows packets from the guest WLAN to route out the WAN interface, and not the LAN interfaces. If the router isn't the gateway, then the WAN interface isn't hooked up which means guest WLAN doesn't work. If you do hook up the WAN interface then the guest network has access to anything reachable from the WAN interface.
 
Just in case anyone comes across this thread and finds it useful.

Setting it up on the WAN as a wireless AP was the solution. The guest network is secure because they can see the computers on the network. But they require login credentials to access them. So this is perfect. Thanks for all the help you guys.
 
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