Is this going to work?

[rfisher]

So I've got a Zyxel P660R broadband modem with built in router.

I'm trying to connect a Netgear WGT624 wireless router to make a wireless system.

Is the modem going to be happy with another router or am I wasting my time?

Ta.

[ATG]

I'm no networking bod, but I think that should work fine. If you choose/have to use the wireless router as a router, you'd set it up so that the modem-router's internal address and wireless router's external address are on their own subnet, say 192.168.1.XXX, and the wireless router's internal address and all of your PCs are on another subnet, say 192.168.2.XXX. You configure the wireless router so that it uses the modem-router's 192.168.1.XXX address as its gateway.

[Rednut05]

Don't you set one to be a router and one to be a gateway? So no conflicting, they all know their place as such.

[aldi]

rfisher said:

So I've got a Zyxel P660R broadband modem with built in router.

I'm trying to connect a Netgear WGT624 wireless router to make a wireless system.

Is the modem going to be happy with another router or am I wasting my time?

Ta.

So zyxel is on the phone line and the netgear has wireless? Disable DHCP on the netgear, preferably change the IP to one on the same subnet but not conflicting with the zyxel. Configure the wireless, job done. Connect the zyxel to a normal network socket on the netgear, not the DSL port.

[rfisher]

aldi said:

So zyxel is on the phone line and the netgear has wireless? Disable DHCP on the netgear, preferably change the IP to one on the same subnet but not conflicting with the zyxel. Configure the wireless, job done. Connect the zyxel to a normal network socket on the netgear, not the DSL port.

Hmmmmm - that's interesting.

Excuse my ignorance here but I'm one of the old school who likes to discover how things work by playing around with them when I should probably RTFM - lol.

So the Netgear could act as an ADSL modem as well as a wireless router?

In that case can't I just use the Netgear and scrap the Zyxel?

I've managed to setup the wireless nicely and can use it on 'my side' of the system to print wirelessly etc. but haven't yet managed to get it to reach the outside world via the Zyxel modem.

[aldi]

rfisher said:

aldi said:

So zyxel is on the phone line and the netgear has wireless? Disable DHCP on the netgear, preferably change the IP to one on the same subnet but not conflicting with the zyxel. Configure the wireless, job done. Connect the zyxel to a normal network socket on the netgear, not the DSL port.

Hmmmmm - that's interesting.

Excuse my ignorance here but I'm one of the old school who likes to discover how things work by playing around with them when I should probably RTFM - lol.

So the Netgear could act as an ADSL modem as well as a wireless router?

In that case can't I just use the Netgear and scrap the Zyxel?

I've managed to setup the wireless nicely and can use it on 'my side' of the system to print wirelessly etc. but haven't yet managed to get it to reach the outside world via the Zyxel modem.

No there's no modem in the netgear, you want to completely ignore the clever bits inside the netgear and just use it as a network switch and wireless access point. The Zyxel has got a modem in it, so use that as your router. In order to prevent the netgears clever bits from doing anything stupid in this non standard setup you need to not use the DSL ethernet connection, just one of the four (presumably) switched connections and disable the onboard DHCP on the netgear cause the zyxell will be running DHCP as well, and you don't want two things running DHCP on the same network. Hope this makes sense?

Just to add, the reason for not just plugging the netgears DSL connection into the zyxel is that then the wireless clients would be what's called 'double-natted' and on a different subnet to the wired clients, which will work for most things but will at some point in the future cause you a whole world of frustration. Hence wanting to shut down the netgears clever bits.

So
1 - plug laptop into zyxel' ethernet, go to http://192.168.1.1
Configure the Zyxel so it works, test it.

2 - plug laptop into Netgear's ethernet, go to http://192.168.0.1
Configure wireless settings, test it. Disable DHCP. Change the netgear's IP to 192.168.1.2 (in that order)
(I think the zyxel's default IP is 192.168.1.1 so it's to match that)

3 - connect the zyxel's ethernet port to one of the four ethernet ports on the netgear
Job done. To tweak the wireless settings in future go to http://192.168.1.2

Edited by aldi on Friday 24th November 13:44

[ATG]

rfisher said:

So the Netgear could act as an ADSL modem as well as a wireless router?

No, I don't think it is a "modem" (misnomer) i.e. it doesn't support the protocol used on the phone line ... PPPoA


... WHat Aldi said.

One thing though ... Aldi's quite right that, assuming you can switch off the netgear's routing, it may make sense to use the thing as a switch and wireless access point. But using it as a router does allow you to create a DMZ which can be useful depending on what you're doing, and you can attach all your wired clients to the netgear router so that all of your devices will be on the same subnet if that is important.

Edited by ATG on Friday 24th November 13:41

[rfisher]

Thanks - I'm now posting wirelessly (if you don't count the laptop being plugged in via a mains adapter as the battery is useless).

Followed Aldi's advice re plugging in the ADSL modem to the wireless thingy through the ethernet network ports and not the adsl ethernet port, got windows to reset the IP address and all worked!

Saved me a lot of time there as it would probably have quite a while before I thought about trying plugging the modem into the network ports (although it seems obvious now - doh!).

Mucho beer on account (in the barrel as they say).