Help appreciated with Ethernet cable / Second router
- Thread starter Ray1000
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You could use the mains earth, in place of the long wire.
At the far end, an old disused router / modem, could be repurposed to provide a wifi access point, and three wired LAN outlets. People get a new one of these, each time they change broadband supplier.
I may not have explained the job properly John, I have bought a 30m length of external cable with one end fitted to plug into the main router ... the cable then goes thro the wall to the outside, half way around the house, about 25m, back thro the wall and into a Ethernet faceplate ready to accept a flexible cable into an XBox or a laptop.
Ray
Using the mains earth is a good idea and one I'd never heard of.
I have a second router in my own house increasing the wifi signal, so I'll probably do the same at my son's.
Thanks
Ray
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You don't need a router, and using one could cause issues that will be difficult for you to resolve, if you end up with two devices on your network attempting to dole out IP addresses
It would save you a lot of faffing to spend a tenner on a second hand SWITCH (hub is old terminology, but occasionally switches are called hubs. Hubs as-were aren't really available any more) from eBay
You thus have your router at one end with this long external cable plugged into it, wired all the way to an RJ45 socket at the other end. From there a short cable (patch cable) connects the socket to an Ethernet switch (search eBay for "gigabit switch") and then both Xbox and laptop connect to the switch, also with patch cables
Switches aren't like light switches, requiring any manual effort from you to switch from one device to another. They're fully automatic things that can be thought of as splitting a single cable (the long external thing" into service as many devices as they have ports. If you bought an 8 port you could plug 7 devices into it, plus your patch cable to your long cable, and all 7 devices would talk to the router at the other end of the long cable. They could also talk to each other directly through the switch without bothering the router. You can go on like this, adding more switches and linking one of their ports (any port) to a port on another switch. All in you build a network a bit like you might use those 1 metre 4 way AC extension leads; you could have 5 of them, and plug 4 of them into the first one, and have 16 sockets a couple of metres away from the wall, or you could link each one into the end of the last one and have 16 sockets spread out over 5 metres..
Enterprise networks tend to have large, powerful switches in a central location, and they run a wire from every port on the switch, to a socket in every room/by every desk etc. This gives the network admins lots of flexibility to connect into the central switch and configure it to be multiple virtual switches, breaking the network up into several virtual ones. For home use you don't need anywhere near that complexity, and it would be typical to see several switches daisy chained together in places where more ports were needed; I have 8 computers in the office, and 4 servers in the garage; I have a switch in each place and two wires one from each switch back to the router, rather than a big switch centrally and 12 wires, 8 to the office and 4 to the garage
--
Side note, what you know as a router has a switch inside it, and possibly some other gubbins, but it's a bit more intelligent than a switch and does things like making sure every computer on the network has a unique address, and it's responsible for relaying internet traffic to and from all the computers on the network. Unless you're comfortable with going into the admin pages of the router and turning off this intelligent functionality so that it functions purely as a dumber switch, I would hesistate to use one just to save a tenner on buying a switch .. frequently older gear has slow switching (wouldn't be unexpected for more the ports on an old router to be 100meg rather than 1000meg speed) and different ISPs configure routers differently; realising a situation where half the computers on your network are trying to routebibternet traffic through an old router that isn't actually connected on its internet side of things will not be fun to diagnose and fix
It would save you a lot of faffing to spend a tenner on a second hand SWITCH (hub is old terminology, but occasionally switches are called hubs. Hubs as-were aren't really available any more) from eBay
You thus have your router at one end with this long external cable plugged into it, wired all the way to an RJ45 socket at the other end. From there a short cable (patch cable) connects the socket to an Ethernet switch (search eBay for "gigabit switch") and then both Xbox and laptop connect to the switch, also with patch cables
Switches aren't like light switches, requiring any manual effort from you to switch from one device to another. They're fully automatic things that can be thought of as splitting a single cable (the long external thing" into service as many devices as they have ports. If you bought an 8 port you could plug 7 devices into it, plus your patch cable to your long cable, and all 7 devices would talk to the router at the other end of the long cable. They could also talk to each other directly through the switch without bothering the router. You can go on like this, adding more switches and linking one of their ports (any port) to a port on another switch. All in you build a network a bit like you might use those 1 metre 4 way AC extension leads; you could have 5 of them, and plug 4 of them into the first one, and have 16 sockets a couple of metres away from the wall, or you could link each one into the end of the last one and have 16 sockets spread out over 5 metres..
Enterprise networks tend to have large, powerful switches in a central location, and they run a wire from every port on the switch, to a socket in every room/by every desk etc. This gives the network admins lots of flexibility to connect into the central switch and configure it to be multiple virtual switches, breaking the network up into several virtual ones. For home use you don't need anywhere near that complexity, and it would be typical to see several switches daisy chained together in places where more ports were needed; I have 8 computers in the office, and 4 servers in the garage; I have a switch in each place and two wires one from each switch back to the router, rather than a big switch centrally and 12 wires, 8 to the office and 4 to the garage
--
Side note, what you know as a router has a switch inside it, and possibly some other gubbins, but it's a bit more intelligent than a switch and does things like making sure every computer on the network has a unique address, and it's responsible for relaying internet traffic to and from all the computers on the network. Unless you're comfortable with going into the admin pages of the router and turning off this intelligent functionality so that it functions purely as a dumber switch, I would hesistate to use one just to save a tenner on buying a switch .. frequently older gear has slow switching (wouldn't be unexpected for more the ports on an old router to be 100meg rather than 1000meg speed) and different ISPs configure routers differently; realising a situation where half the computers on your network are trying to routebibternet traffic through an old router that isn't actually connected on its internet side of things will not be fun to diagnose and fix
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I do normally agree with most of your comments, but all that needs to be done to a repurposed ISP supplied modem/router, is turn off DHCP in it's menu.
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Sure, if it's even possible - we don't know what old cark is lying in a drawer and not saying we wouldn't help with it either, but if I was playing tech support at the other end of a text interface to a non-techie, talking them through finding or recovering the password for the router they might not even be able to identify, with a custom firmware, and only one laptop that needs to be variably connected between the LAN side of the working router they use to post on here and the LAN side of the old router..
..all to save about 7 quid* and end up with a 100meg 4 port..
I wouldn't bother!
(* price revised from a tenner having found a reasonable few tplink gig 5 port switches going for this amount
..all to save about 7 quid* and end up with a 100meg 4 port..
I wouldn't bother!
(* price revised from a tenner having found a reasonable few tplink gig 5 port switches going for this amount
Thank you for going to the trouble to explain in an understandable way.
As I mentioned I have two routers in our house… a forty foot square bungalow with the router in one corner and no Wi-Fi in the other were it not for the second unit.
I understand what you mean about the complexity of setting the second one up … Each time I’ve updated mine over the years, I’ve had to follow instructions online in great detail and still never certain it’s exactly as it should be. Having said that with the second router on the Wi-Fi extends into the garden.
I’m using the latest TT routers
Thanks again
Ray
As I mentioned I have two routers in our house… a forty foot square bungalow with the router in one corner and no Wi-Fi in the other were it not for the second unit.
I understand what you mean about the complexity of setting the second one up … Each time I’ve updated mine over the years, I’ve had to follow instructions online in great detail and still never certain it’s exactly as it should be. Having said that with the second router on the Wi-Fi extends into the garden.
I’m using the latest TT routers
Thanks again
Ray
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It can be a tricky thing, using routers plugged into routers such that the downstream router routes to the upstream one. It would be quite typical for an isp's router to be set up so what it regards as the private LAN side (the switch, with the Ethernet ports) always routes through what it regards as the WAN side (the DSL modem) with no way to configure it such that it regards an Ethernet port as the uplink. There may also be issues with wireless clients being isolated from each other and from the wired clients, and the whole thing be not very configurable because it's designed for one particular use case. Usually I'd advise to use them as switches rather than routers like Harry says, and turn off DHCP so they aren't attempting to configure computers to route through a connection that isn't connected (but as noted, they can sometimes be a fairly poor switch too, and buying a dedicated one gets you more faster ports for the price of a couple of pints)
I'd prefer to have one ISP router, as many switches connected to it as necessary for the demands of the wired devices in the house, and connected to those some second hand commercial grade WiFi access points like Ubiquiti UniFi - I have exactly this setup and genuinely don't recall ever having to reboot anything other than the router - the rest of the network tech has been supremely reliable and great signal strength from the ubiquiti units, plus commercial grade features like an open guest wifi network that is speed throttled so I don't have to give away my wifi password nor have visitors clowning my bandwidth
Prices for decent wifi APs have risen in recent years; £40 a pop used to be the norm but they're a bit more now
I'd prefer to have one ISP router, as many switches connected to it as necessary for the demands of the wired devices in the house, and connected to those some second hand commercial grade WiFi access points like Ubiquiti UniFi - I have exactly this setup and genuinely don't recall ever having to reboot anything other than the router - the rest of the network tech has been supremely reliable and great signal strength from the ubiquiti units, plus commercial grade features like an open guest wifi network that is speed throttled so I don't have to give away my wifi password nor have visitors clowning my bandwidth
Prices for decent wifi APs have risen in recent years; £40 a pop used to be the norm but they're a bit more now
Can you show me an example?Sure, if it's even possible - we don't know what old cark is lying in a drawer and not saying we wouldn't help with it either, but if I was playing tech support at the other end of a text interface to a non-techie, talking them through finding or recovering the password for the router they might not even be able to identify, with a custom firmware, and only one laptop that needs to be variably connected between the LAN side of the working router they use to post on here and the LAN side of the old router..
..all to save about 7 quid* and end up with a 100meg 4 port..
I wouldn't bother!
(* price revised from a tenner having found a reasonable few tplink gig 5 port switches going for this amount
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What of?
..all to save about 7 quid* and end up with a 100meg 4 port..
I wouldn't bother!
(* price revised from a tenner having found a reasonable few tplink gig 5 port switches going for this amount
Beginning with no spare kit, then I would agree, but most people now do have spare router/modems tucked away in cupboards, doing absolutely nothing, and 100meg isn't really that slow, for a home network. It more than satisfies my peak usage.