Can You Help? Routing Through a Hub

The cable modem is in the basement. If I connect the router to the WAN port I have to have the router in the basement. I have computers on the 2nd floor of my house that get poor wireless reception if the router is down in the basement, so I was trying to avoid that.

I'll find another solution.

Thanks for your >

why not just connect the above router directly to your cable modem, turn on DHCP, configure all your clients to get addresses from it. You can generally run a long length of CAT5 from the modem to the router without any problems.

Yes.

This just won't work. The router expects the modem to be on the WAN port, and will try to get a DHCP addy from that port.

By using the router properly !! Its a router, its designed to link two networks (the internet and your LAN), so use it to do that !!

There are severe restrictions on connecting one hub to another. At 100 Mbps using maximum length cables, you can't even have two hubs. You can, however, cascade all the Ethernet SWITCHES that you want.

Ron Bandes, CCNP, CTT+, etc.

"Rick" wrote in news:0u%yd.46951$ snipped-for-privacy@fe05.lga:

You flip it. The modem connects to the WAN port on the router. You can plug the hub into one of the LAN ports on the router to extend the network. You can also connect one hub to another hub to extend the network and so on and so on. The router can control over 200 computers issuing a DHCP IP to each computer. The router also has a built in smart switch. The router is the gateway device for the LAN and WAN. It is not the hub.

Duane :)

"Ron Bandes" wrote in news:tS7zd.17354$ snipped-for-privacy@fe10.lga:

I have this Networth Series 2000 Snappable Hub that was on a rack with other hubs that was given to me from a previous job. I don't use it any more since I switched to a router and now a FW appliance. Each floor had these racks of hubs that had expansion RJ45 slots In/Out and were connected together. This appliance also has an UP Link with MDI and MDI-X settings and a COM Port, but I don't know what they are about.

Duane :)

No, you don't. Any of your Ethernet cables can be 100 meters long.

No, just run a long ethernet cable from the modem to the router WAN port - you already have one, since you've somehow attached the modem to one of hte router LAN ports....

For what its worth, my wireless router is currently around 100ft from my modem, as the cable runs.

It's not a question of cable length, but thanks for the try.

As it stands, I'll put the router >

Final solution:

I'll use the one long cable from basement to 1st floor to connect the modem to the router. Then I'll put a wireless card on the basement computer as well as the other computers. The solution is really to make nearly all the computers wireless. If I kept the basement computer wired I would have had to either run 2 cables -- 1 up to router and 1 down to basement computer -- or leave the router in the basement with poor wireless reception on the 2nd floor.

If you need to connect devices in the basement, get a wired router (less than $40 these days) for the basement and connect the long Ethernet cable to one of its LAN ports. Upstairs, connect the other end of that cable to one of your wireless router's LAN ports. Disable NAT and DHCP functions on the upstairs router so that it functions as an access point.

I don't understand - you have a cable running from the basement to the 2nd floor already no?

Or as someone said, buy a wired router, put that in the basement attached to your modem and basement computer (modem into WAN port, computer into LAN port) and run your long cable up to your wireless router - attach to a LAN port on it. Disable DHCP on the wireless router and all will work fine.

Before the price of switches came down to approach hub prices, it was common to have a central switch connected to hubs on each floor. If you needed more ports on a floor, it was best to expand your hub by adding stackable hubs. When hubs are stacked using special, proprietary cabling they act like one large hub and not like cascaded hubs.

The rules for cascading hubs are different for 10Base-T and for 100Base-TX.

10Base-T could allow 4 hubs in a series with maximum-length cables. With 100Base-TX there are two classes of hubs, and a second hub must be within 5 meters of the first hub if the first hub has other maximum-length cables on it.

Ethernet ports either have a built-in transceiver (Medium Dependent Interface [MDI] ports) or they require an external transceiver (Medium Independent Interface [MII] ports). On 10Base-T the MII is called Attachment Unit Interface (AUI).

Between two Medium Dependent Interfaces, it is necessary to cross-over the wires so that both interfaces aren't talking on the same pair of wires with nobody listening, and both listening on the same (other) pair of wires with nobody talking. This crossing-over can be done within the cable (a crossover cable) or it can be done within one of the ports. Stations (like computers and routers) have MDI ports on their transceivers. Hubs normally have MDI-X (MDI crossed) ports for connecting to stations. The MDI-X ports receive on the transmit wire pair, and transmit on the receive wire pair. When you connect two devices with opposite types of ports (MDI and MDI-X) you use a straight cable since the crossing has already been accomplished within the MDI-X port. When you connect two devices that both have MDI ports, you must use a crossover cable. When you connect two devices that both have MDI-X ports, you also must use a crossover cable, since the two internal crossings cancel each other out.

An uplink port on a switch or hub is an MDI port that can be straight-cabled to the normal MDI-X port of a hub further upstream.

The COM port on your hub is not an Ethernet port. It is used to connect a console terminal (or computer with async terminal emulator), which can be used to manage the hub.

Ron Bandes, CCNP, CTT+, etc.

"Ron Bandes" wrote in news:0pIzd.19022$ snipped-for-privacy@fe10.lga:

That was interesting reading. So a switch was at the center of it all.

Duane :)