29.03.2024, 12:55 UhrDeutsch | English
Hallo Gast [ Registrierung | Anmelden ]

Neues Thema eröffnen   Neue Antwort erstellen
Vorheriges Thema anzeigen Druckerfreundliche Version Einloggen, um private Nachrichten zu lesen Nächstes Thema anzeigen
Autor Nachricht
eco2geek
Titel: Home LAN w/3 routers: How to see around the corners?  BeitragVerfasst am: 09.09.2006, 01:27 Uhr



Anmeldung: 02. Mai 2004
Beiträge: 471
Wohnort: Portland, OR, USA
This is a networking question, but not a Kanotix networking question, so I'm asking it in "Anything goes."

We ended up with 3 routers in our home LAN. Router #1 doesn't have any wireless support, and is the one jacked into the cable modem. It's connected via physical cables to three computers. Router #2 does have wireless, and is jacked into router #1. We use it for wireless access on one side of the house. Router #3 is a strange beast that's jacked into router #2, plugs into a wall outlet, and sends bits to its other half on the other side of the house through the electrical wiring, which then offers wireless to the other side of the house. (The wireless signal from router #2 doesn't reach all the way.)

All three currently enable us to get on the Internet. However, the goal is to be able to print to a shared printer hooked up to a computer attached to router #1, through computers attached to routers #2 or #3. Or access files on a computer attached to router #1, through computers attached to routers #2 or #3.

I don't know much about this stuff, and am wondering if there are any networking gurus here who can point me to resources (howto's, books, tutorials) that would tell me how to accomplish that.
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
michael7
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 09.09.2006, 02:47 Uhr



Anmeldung: 24. Mai 2005
Beiträge: 354
Wohnort: Nashville
eco,

I can't answer your questions, as I have much less knowledge about these things. You have answered a question that I have had for sometime, however. You have a wired router, into which you have plugged a wireless router. How good is your wireless signal?

I like wired routers because in my experience, they are more stable and dependable. My wife, however, wants to roam around the house with her laptop which has a wireless adapter. When I used a wireless router to please her, it kept dropping the signal. Very irritating. So, I took the wireless router back to the store and reinstalled my wired router.

Later, I began to wonder if I could have the best of both worlds by plugging a wireless router into my wired router. So, does it work satisfactorily for you?

_________________
Debian Social Contract
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
ockham23
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 09.09.2006, 08:09 Uhr



Anmeldung: 25. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 2133

Maybe it's possible to turn off the DHCP server and firewall functions of routers #2 and #3. This would convert #2 into an ordinary switch combined with a wireless access point and #3 into another switch. As a result, router #1 would assign IP addresses to all clients connected to the network, and all devices would share the same subnet (e.g., 192.168.0.XXX). Once you've created a single subnet without segments and firewalls, setting up file and printer sharing should be easy. (Unless, of course, samba and/or cups are broken again.) Winken

_________________
And I ain't got no worries 'cause I ain't in no hurry at all (Doobie Brothers, "Black Water").
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
XOn
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 09.09.2006, 12:02 Uhr



Anmeldung: 10. Aug 2004
Beiträge: 381
Wohnort: Germany/NRW
The truth is anywhere outside...

(http://www.portforward.com)

Great Site, that points the way to connect nearly every Router-model
to your special kind of subnet.

Nice Forum, - well explained tut's.

Guess, that will help you to set up the right ports,
so that you only have to check your software.

Greetings,
XOn
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden AIM-Name  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
slh
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 09.09.2006, 13:29 Uhr



Anmeldung: 16. Aug 2004
Beiträge: 1905

Assuming you have no option to install alternative firmware (dd-wrt for example) that let you easily re- use/ remap the WAN port, just set the WAN port to dhcp and leave it unconnected, disable dhcp in all but one router (perhaps router 1), set their LAN settings to the same subnet and unique IPs, then hook router 2 and 3 into one of the LAN ports of router 1 (router 2 respectively).
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
Cuddles
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 09.09.2006, 14:16 Uhr



Anmeldung: 05. Jul 2004
Beiträge: 298
Wohnort: Salt Lake City, UT, U.S.A.
eco2geek,

First, you really through me for a loop on your subject / content... My first response was going to be "height", as in, what does "every" radio, or cellphone relay, recv, or send, point do when it needs some kind of reception? Place the largest, highest "Tower" it can, in a centrally located high ground point. The same would hold true for a wireless router, place it at the highest, un-obstructed point in your environment...

But, then, as I read further, you threw me off with the whole wired / corded condendum...

I prefer the "wired" method, as michael7 seems to agree. I think you cant go wrong with "hard wired", its either connected, or its not, and, finding that out, is as simple as checking the cord on the back. Simple and easy... And you cant beat "corded" for security, if someone is "tapped in" its kind of hard not to notice the wire...

But, with all the "wireless" ability now, many cant use a hard wired method anymore, we are even looking into the wireless arena to solve a problem we have in our home network environment ( computer #3 is in a remote location in the house, and a hard wired cable, is not easy to get to it ). I tend to stick with the "old school" network topography, than "jumping" on the bandwagon of this whole "new school" area.

I think slh & ockham23 have the greatest idea, in your situation. Make one of the routers, "head of the pack", and let all others, just "piggy-back" off of it. I would think it would be the easiest, router #1 would be the central "hub", and routers #2 & #3 would just be "collection" points then. This should also afford you an easier avenue to configuring all of your shared resources; printers, internet, hard drives, files, and only need to isolate the problems down to only ONE router and the two systems in concern; the one system WITH the resource, and the one system WANTING it... Instead of a multitde of headaches; 3 routers and 3 systems, to contend with, and all the combinations of them.

I think, XOn has the greatest link, and resource though... Possibly add it into a wiki, or sticky, for future assistance?

Anywho, your security of your home network would be protected from the options on router #1, and cut access from the internet... and your home network should be open to access from your "trusted" systems within the network. Sounds good Smilie

Not really sure if I helped, or just "re-hashed" and summarized ? Good Luck, my friend,

_________________
Ms. Cuddles
-=- Come to the Dark Side... We have penguins! -=-
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden Yahoo Messenger  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
JimC
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 09.09.2006, 15:51 Uhr



Anmeldung: 16. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 219

Zitat:
The wireless signal from router #2 doesn't reach all the way.)


Is it centrally located?

My solution:

Buy a router that supports both wireless and wired connections and locate it in the center of the home for best range to more than one computer via wireless.

The only wired connection I'm using on it right now is for my telephone service, though (I'm using a VOIP service that gives me unlimited local and long distance for $19.95/month, including all of the "bells, whistles and buzzers" like voice mail, caller id, conferencing, etc.). So, I've got the phone service adapter and a cordless base unit for the phones located in the same area.

I went wireless on my PC and on my wife's laptop. I used to have the cable modem in my office with my PC and the phone adapter plugged into it.

But, since the cable modem will work on any of the Cable TV connections in the home, I moved it into our Den which is more centrally located (I'm just using a cheap splitter I got at Home Depot to send the Cable Signal to both the cable modem and the television there). The cable company had originally installed it in my office.

I went with a Linksys WRT-54G (it was on sale at my local Staples for around $49 when I first bought it), and it works just fine for my limited needs.

I've got two different wireless adapters I use with my PC, depending on the Linux distro I'm using (some don't work quite right with one or the other).

One is a Netgear WG311v3 (version 3) that I can get working via ndiswrapper (although it does have some config quirks like needing a valid ESSID that I don't need with other adapters).

The other is a Belkin Wireless G USB Adapter. I like this one better, since it includes a small stand for plugging it into (or you can plug it directly into a USB port without the included stand and cord). I use the stand so I can position it for the best signal. It's using the rt2570 chipset, and works with some distros, but not others.

My wife's laptop is using an old Lucent PCMCIA Adapter of some kind (and most distros see and use it without any kind of configuration at all).

I've got my PC setup triboot right now with Windows XP Pro, SimplyMEPIS 6.0, and Kanotix 2006-easter-rc4. With Windows and SimplyMEPIS, I use the Belkin (since I get a better signal with it).

With Kanotix, I use the Netgear (since the kernel included in this distro apparently doesn't support this adapter, and I haven't felt like swapping it to the UP kernel since I reinstalled Kanotix 2006-easter-rc4 again recently).

This adapter does work "straight from the box" with Kanotix 2005-04 though, and you can use the UP kernel with 2006-easter-rc4 if you wanted to use this Belkin.

So, if your wireless router isn't centrally locted, you may want to move it somewhere else where you have a cable outlet (or have the cable company or someone else put a cable connection somewhere more centrally located).

Then, just go wireless on all of your PCs using an adapter that gets a good signal. You could move the cable modem and wireless router somewhere else first and test the wireless signal to make sure it's strong enough before buying adapters for all of them (and USB adapters make it easy to change over from wired to wireless).

_________________
Jim C.
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
tinker
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 09.09.2006, 18:07 Uhr



Anmeldung: 09. Sep 2006
Beiträge: 13

eco2geek,

My first question would be how big is your house and what is it made of. These days one of the issues with the proliferation of wireless is that far too many people are leaving these things with default settings and thereby creating open access points because of the coverage of wireless. There may be extremely short range ones available but most I have seen give at least 100m of coverage. From personal experience, I can walk over to my neighbours front porch and receive a signal (diminished in strength) from a wireless router installed at my house and we live in a rural area on acreage. People WAR drive around urban neighbourhoods looking for unsecured access points (and find many). So, unless your house is huge and spread out or has metal walls, I wonder why more than one wireless router would be necessary.

I do agree with what the other posters have been stating. Have only one DHCP server which will then get all your computers in the same subnet. From that point it should be possible to continue to setup shared printing etc.

I may have misunderstood but it seems to me you normally could do what you desire with one wireless broadband router (assuming it also has wired ports). Plug WAN port into broadband modem, plug your non-wireless computers into wired ports and have wireless port service the computers that need wireless. I have set that up for a friend of mine and she has desktop wired (no wireless ethernet card) and can wander around the house with her wireless laptop (or even outside down to the pond). I can pickup her wireless from the street in front of her house. It is possible that there is something about the size of your house (if it's huge - 100 meters is about 1000 ft.) or the composition of the walls that blocks coverage but I think that would be rare in a residence.

Edit: Oops, 100m is about 300 ft. but most houses aren't that spread out in any case.
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
Cuddles
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 09.09.2006, 18:48 Uhr



Anmeldung: 05. Jul 2004
Beiträge: 298
Wohnort: Salt Lake City, UT, U.S.A.
Not to go "off-topic" here, but, someone enlighten me on this...

I was under the impression, that, to use wireless networking, you need the following:

1 ) the wireless receiver/transmitter - i.e. a wireless router in my case...
2 ) a system with a wireless nic...
3 ) activate the router to allow traffic through the wireless access...
4 ) set the systems wireless nic to allow, set IP, and passphrase for access to router...

From what, little, I know, of wireless, the most IMPORTANT part in all of this, is, the PASSPHRASE. ( isnt that what keeps others from accessing your wireless, and hijacking it? ( I think the term is "sniffing" for attacks ? )

Other than the PASSPHRASE, no one can access "into" the network without it, right??? ( or am I a clueless newb? )

_________________
Ms. Cuddles
-=- Come to the Dark Side... We have penguins! -=-
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden Yahoo Messenger  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
eco2geek
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 15.09.2006, 22:55 Uhr



Anmeldung: 02. Mai 2004
Beiträge: 471
Wohnort: Portland, OR, USA
Thanks to XOn for the link; this tutorial did the trick. Now router #1 is the only one working as a DHCP server, and the other two are on the same subnet.

We have an unusually long house made of brick, lath and plaster. And I'm not looking forward to dealing with the rat's nest of wires in the attic left by the previous occupant. So, no centrally-located wireless router yet, until I get up there and string some cable.

Cuddles, most laptops these days have built-in (internal) wireless as well as built-in NICs with RJ45 jacks. So you can do either wired or wireless with them, out of the box. (You can buy a wireless NIC for your desktop computer, too, or use a USB doohicky that does wirelesss, or...there are lots of options.)

I'm not qualified to generalize about wireless routers, but the ones I've seen have unsecured wireless access enabled by default. It's left up to the user to set an SSID and to enable WEP.

Not only that, but routers usually have a web-based configuration page with well-known default passwords (it's usually just preset to be "admin/password"), and it's left up to the user to change it. If the user doesn't, anyone within range can not only use the wireless connection, they can also mess with the router's internal settings.

So there are things you can and should do to make your wireless router secure, but you have to change the insecure defaults. Many don't. (Does that sound like any operating systems out there?) A friend told me she could see 4 open wireless networks from her laptop at home.
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
Cuddles
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 15.09.2006, 23:10 Uhr



Anmeldung: 05. Jul 2004
Beiträge: 298
Wohnort: Salt Lake City, UT, U.S.A.
eco2geek,

As far as I know, that was the first thing I did, change default password, name is the same, I then de-activated the wifi, dont need it at this moment, we also set an almost imposible passphrase (combination of upper/lower case, combined words, and strung from an obscure movie quote, about 50 letters long), I enabled that security wep, not sure bout the SSID thing tho... this is a NetGear, and it does run thru a web browser. I didnt want to become a statistic on insecurity, nor the "current poster chold" for it either.

Glad to see you got your network happy, a happy network makes for happy systems, happy users, and even happier Sys Admins Smilie

_________________
Ms. Cuddles
-=- Come to the Dark Side... We have penguins! -=-
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden Yahoo Messenger  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
tinker
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 16.09.2006, 14:50 Uhr



Anmeldung: 09. Sep 2006
Beiträge: 13

ms. cuddles,

When you start using your wireless access, it might be a good idea to turn off broadcast of the SSID too. You and your users know what it is but there probably isn't any reason to broadcast it for anyone driving by to see.

These days most security experts consider WEP encryption fairly easy to crack and any "black hats" out there trying to do bad things with open access points would be able to crack even your good passphrase. If your equipment has the capability of WAP or the newer WAP2 then it probably would be a good idea to use one of those instead of WEP. That said, any security is better than no security and what you have done is much better than what most people do by leaving the darn things with default setup and open.

I still like wired routers and switches, much harder for unwanted guests to join your network, although, not as convenient for wandering around the house with a laptop. Since you said you turned the radio off, this is the configuration you're presently using.
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
Cuddles
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 16.09.2006, 15:19 Uhr



Anmeldung: 05. Jul 2004
Beiträge: 298
Wohnort: Salt Lake City, UT, U.S.A.
Tinker,

Had to check, but, the NetGear Router actually has something (it says) is better, "WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key)" - and that is what we have enabled, along with the passphrase.

Thanks for the "non-broadcast" idea, will be sure, when we bring the WLAN up, we set that...

I totally agree with you on the wireless/hard-wired thing... All three of the systems we have, or are planning to have, are desktop computers, and wont be "roaming" the house. I could run a hard-wire for the third system we are going to be introducing, but, it would be a pain to get the wire in the right place, so, we opt'ed for the wireless router. Convieniance won out over PITA here.

Was just wondering, do I want to "activate" the "radio", and watch for suspicious activity? Is that possible? Or, is it just giving someone a chance to get in, while we dont need to, or have to, have ourselves open?

I dont want to have anyone think I am hijacking this thread, but, was just wondering, as the subject "closely" covered my questions.

Thanks for any ideas, help, etc... for this WLAN Knewbie Smilie

_________________
Ms. Cuddles
-=- Come to the Dark Side... We have penguins! -=-
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden Yahoo Messenger  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
tinker
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 16.09.2006, 18:28 Uhr



Anmeldung: 09. Sep 2006
Beiträge: 13

eco2geek,

I just remembered something that I didn't mention but which might apply in your case. Are you by any chance using any wireless phones that are operating in the 2.4Ghz band, that could cause interference if your router is also operating in that band? If so, you could try relocating things or turning the phone broadcast off to see if it improved reception from the wireless router.

Ms. Cuddles,

Well, you already hijacked this thread with your first question but nobody seems to have objected. Smilie

I think you have made the correct choice by leaving the radio turned off at this time, given the rest of what you wrote. I can't see any benefit to you to attract "suspicious activity". When you are using the wireless though, you probably would want to keep your eyes open.

Many routers have an option to limit the number of connections that are opened by DHCP. If you're only going to be using the one computer wirelessly, you could consider limiting that to 1. If that computer is always on, and thus connected, in theory the router would not give out an IP address to anyone else. Note: I haven't tested that theory but you could when you set up for your new wireless computer. MAC address filtering is another topic you may want to research, but it is just another layer of security, it's fairly trivial to spoof a mac address, and the bad guys (and girls) will know how.
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
eco2geek
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 21.09.2006, 08:31 Uhr



Anmeldung: 02. Mai 2004
Beiträge: 471
Wohnort: Portland, OR, USA
tinker hat folgendes geschrieben::
Are you by any chance using any wireless phones that are operating in the 2.4Ghz band, that could cause interference if your router is also operating in that band?


No, we upgraded to 5.8 GHz phones, for the same reason we got the powerline range extender -- the signal at the other end of the house was too poor. Funny you should mention that, though. A girl at work told me the other day that she'd get kicked off their wireless signal whenever they made a phone call.
 
 Benutzer-Profile anzeigen Private Nachricht senden  
Antworten mit Zitat Nach oben
Beiträge vom vorherigen Thema anzeigen:     
Gehe zu:  
Alle Zeiten sind GMT + 1 Stunde
Neues Thema eröffnen   Neue Antwort erstellen
Vorheriges Thema anzeigen Druckerfreundliche Version Einloggen, um private Nachrichten zu lesen Nächstes Thema anzeigen
PNphpBB2 © 2003-2007 
 
Deutsch | English
Logos and trademarks are the property of their respective owners, comments are property of their posters, the rest is © 2004 - 2006 by Jörg Schirottke (Kano).
Consult Impressum and Legal Terms for details. Kanotix is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL license.
This CMS is powered by PostNuke, all themes used at this site are released under the GNU/GPL license. designed and hosted by w3you. Our web server is running on Kanotix64-2006.