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A few questions about home networking

First, I have a couple of old routers, and I'd like to use them as network switches to expand my wired network a bit. I have an old Linksys WRT54G and an almost as old Netgear WGR614. The wireless spectrum is crowded in my neighborhood, so if possible I'd like to disable the wireless capability of one or both of these. Is this possible, and if so, is it safe to do so? Is it easily done?

The reason for this is to enable wired access to the network in several different rooms by 2 or more devices in each room, without running new cable fron the main switch in my main computer room.

And if the wireless capability can't be disabled, once the router(s) are set up as access points, is there any good way to simply reduce the range of the wireless capability? The WRT54G has removable antenna... any harm from simply removing them?

And since I don't intend to use the wireless capability of them, is it even necessary to convert them to access points.... can I simply plug them in and use them as switches?

Any suggestions appreciated.

Reply to
Charlie Hoffpauir
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Physically connect to a LAN port on the first device and browse to its admin GUI. Once there, disable DHCP. If you see any routing protocols enabled, disable them, as well. On the WRT54G, I believe the Wireless Mode has settings for B, G, B&G, and None. Select None to disable the wireless capability.

Now you can use it as a switch, but you'll need to leave the WAN port unused because it's assigned to the 'other side' of the router section. If you really need the extra port, you can try to find 3rd party firmware, such as dd-wrt, that allows you to reassign the WAN port to the LAN side of the router section.

Reply to
Char Jackson

Also note that simple switches are very inexpensive these days (not as inexpensive as your free old WRT54G - but less than $20 or $30). The newer ones support faster speeds as well. You can even buy them at Walmart.

Reply to
Pat

Yes both can be used as switches, and wireless can be turned off on both the Linksys WRT54G and all models of the Netgear WGR614 that I have seen.

Reply to
Kirk_Von_Rockstein

Simple as in unmanaged. I'm using some D-link "green" series. Green as in it doesn't power ports not being used. It auto switches so you never need a crossover. Operations is basically a no brainer. I never read the manual. Just plug and play. I have no idea how the router knows to use the DHCP through the switch and I really don't care to learn the fu.

I vaguely remember somebody on this list saying you should get a switch that is as big as you need and then use one connection from the router to the switch. That is port to port speed may suffer if some local paths have to go though the router and the switch rather than all being on the switch.

Reply to
miso

That's true when the router-embedded switch and the standalone switch are able to operate at different speeds. For example, when the embedded switch is 10/100 while the standalone switch is capable of 10/100/1000. If two Gigabit-capable PC's are connected directly to the Gigabit switch, they can establish a Gigabit connection between themselves. However, if one of those PC's is connected directly to the 10/100 switch, then the end to end connection will be limited to the slowest link, which is 100 megabits in this example.

Upgrade everything to the same speed and you don't have to worry about where things are plugged in, to a certain extent, but if your switches run at different speeds it becomes something to carefully consider.

Reply to
Char Jackson

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