Plugging router into repeater?

[rpeters83]

My parents live on a boat with wifi at the pier. They have a repeater in their boat but they are looking to get a couple smart devices, such as echo dots and smart bulbs. I understand these may not work properly if not on a local network. Our thought was to plug a router into the LAN port of the repeater and use the wifi on the router instead to handle NAT, DNS, dhcp, etc instead of the repeater, thus creating their own local network.

Would this work? Suggestions? Thanks.

 

[GotNoRice]

If they are all connected to the repeater, then they are already connected to a local network (the wifi, via the repeater). Simply verify that they are all getting a local IP address and if necessary verify that they can ping each other. You could create a separate local network via your router if you wanted, but you would have to double-NAT. If you are going to do that, plug the WAN port of your router into one of the LAN ports of the repeater. Make sure the local IP addresses that your router is giving out are NOT FROM THE SAME SUBNET as the local IP addresses that are being given out via the Wifi/repeater, otherwise you are going to create a conflict.

 

[rpeters83]

My concern was that this may be a public wifi access point, that devices on the network (i.e., every other device from other users at the marina) wont (or shouldn't) be able to see each other. We were hoping to subnet to create a mini LAN on my parents boat.

Their extender is a netgear ex6200, which seems pretty nice. We were hoping to plug a router and NAT using that. The downside is we probably wont be using the wifi from the repeater anymore, rather the wifi from the router.

Will this work?

Edit: I was hoping to have them see if they can set up two computers on the extender and see if they can ping each other. However they only have one computer on the boat.

 

[scrappymouse]

My parents live on a boat with wifi at the pier. They have a repeater in their boat but they are looking to get a couple smart devices, such as echo dots and smart bulbs. I understand these may not work properly if not on a local network. Our thought was to plug a router into the LAN port of the repeater and use the wifi on the router instead to handle NAT, DNS, dhcp, etc instead of the repeater, thus creating their own local network.

Would this work? Suggestions? Thanks.

They actually don't have to be on the same network(you would think they would need to be), depending on the type of smart devices. I have an ECHO dot along with some tp-link smart bulbs. Just to test i put them in an isolated guest network(devices can't talk to each other on the same LAN) and to my surprise they still worked just fine. Than I did a packet capture.....They go through the internet, and talk to each other via API's back to your local LAN....you may run into SOME issues with them not being on the same LAN(For example setting a group for ECHO speakers to play together(need to be same LAN for that)...but if you get an ECHO dot and some TP-LINK wireless bulbs(no hub needed), than there is no need for them to be on the same LAN....