Plugging single wireless routers into network ethernet points...

[MrBitey]

Hello there,

 

I'm trying to increase the wireless coverage in our little (but sprawling) primary school.

 

at the mo, we have a fairly old windows network running classroom pcs and old laptops on XP

we have two netgear wireless routers plugged in - one directly into the switch and another plugged into an ethernet point on the other side of the building

 

between them, these two probably cover about 60% of the school. I'm hoping to be able to plug a couple more in to increase the coverage.

Hopefully it will suit our needs and not cost us the £5000 we've been quoted for a managed wifi system.

 

Today, I had a fiddle around with an old netgear wireless router of mine. Plugged it into an ethernet point in my classroom and it seemed to work fine

Next I logged into the router to change the network name ('reception' as it's going down in the early years dept - hopefully) and password to something more obvious for the school.

Logged back in. It worked fine for about 20 seconds then stopped working.

The laptops I was trying it with were still connected with a strong signal and could disconnect/reconnect. But I could not get connected to the internet or connect to the server...

 

Any ideas as to what pitfalls I may have fallen into? Is it just not a go-er?

 

thanks very much - not really an expert on this but having to learn out of necessity!

 

cheers

MrB

[Steve21]

One of the main things to remember would be disabling the DHCP on the router, as this should be dealt with by the server. Else you'll find it's giving out IP ranges that deffo won't work with the main network.

 

Also you'd generally want want to set it up to use the server as the gateway on the router, aka it's not the router directly connected to the internet, but just passing the clients back to the server.

 

If you've put a stronger authentication on the router, remember you may need to service pack XP if you're running SP1/2 still, as they don't always play nicely with WPA2 etc.

 

Steve

[MrBitey]

Thanks Steve21, that makes sense! I was looking at the checkbox on the router DHCP and thinking 'hmm, maybe I should disable that' - didn't try it as I ran out of time and was ejected by the schoolkeeper...

 

will try that next time I get time!

[mac_shinobi]

Cant you put the router into gateway mode and set it so the router gets an ip address via dhcp and like @Steve21 said disable the router from dishing out dhcp so its almost setup to be a wifi access point

 

Something similar to http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-basics/30338-how-to-convert-a-wireless-router-into-an-access-point

Edited June 17, 2013 by mac_shinobi

[Duke5A]

You really shouldn't be using a router for this. I would hit up eBay or the like and search for Linksys WAP54G access points. They're cheap, compatible with Radius servers and would do exactly what your looking to do.