The network topography of my house involve a cable modem in the downstairs basement and a wireless router with radio disabled there also in the basement so all the wired connections involving home entertainment systems and gaming consoles will go to the outlets in the basement leading to the appropriate rooms. (The basement wired connections use a radio disabled wireless router because they are actually cheaper than wired routers themselves). Then one of the wired connections lead to a central area of the house that has a wireless router to broadcast Wi-Fi in the appropriate location. (Obviously broadcasting wifi in the basement where the cable modem is would not make sense.) Anyways, for a while a lot of the computers keep getting self-assigned ip addresses usually after they restart or come out of hibernate and then connect to the wifi. Almost every time that happens I have to reset the modem the router and second router every time and it gets annoying. Could this have anything to do with having two routers in the house? Should I get a wireless switch for the central area instead? Or would that not make a difference?
Networking – Is it a good idea to have two routers connected to each other
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Related Solutions
There is no need to change the modem to 'router' mode.
You've described this topology:
===coax=== <WAN>
cable modem
<LAN> -------[ethernet switch]-------- <WAN>
synology router
<LAN> --- etc.
In this situation, it doesn't matter whether devices connected directly to cable modem's switch will get public or private addresses, because you wouldn't want to have any devices connected there at all:
Your main reason for using the Synology router was its protection features, and connecting devices to the cable modem's switch would completely bypass the attic router.
From the attic router's perspective, the switch is on the "WAN" side. It is a separate network from your main LAN, it has separate addressing, and the Synology router does not serve DHCP on that interface. (Even if you statically configured the addresses to match Synology LAN, it wouldn't work as the devices would still be physically in the wrong network.)
Devices connected to this switch wouldn't be able to access your main Synology LAN, unless you configured a hole through its firewalls and security features. (Or you could use port forwarding to get into the LAN, but a home network that relies on port-forwarding inside the network is just not good design at all.)
Your main LAN would be able to access devices on this switch (as long as both routers use different subnet prefixes), but the Synology router would perform NAT on the connections, meaning these devices wouldn't see the real client IP addresses. This is just a minor issue (and in some routers a NAT exception can be configured), but it can be an annoyance depending on what exactly you run in the basement, and again – not great design.
If you need the switch because you must have Ethernet ports available in the basement, there's only one option: basement → attic → basement. Run one Ethernet cable from the modem directly to the router's WAN interface, and a second cable back from the router's LAN to the basement switch.
Once that's done, there is absolutely no advantage in having the modem in 'router' mode.
If you cannot run a second cable all the way, the same can be achieved using two managed switches with VLAN tagging:
- On both switches, configure 1) one port in 'access' mode for the "WAN" vlan, 2) one port in 'trunk' or 'all VLANs tagged' mode; 3) the remaining ports in 'access' mode for the "LAN" vlan.
- Install one switch in the basement, the other in the attic.
- Connect the switches together using the "trunk" port.
- On the attic switch, connect the designated "WAN" port to the router's WAN side, and one of the "LAN" ports to the router's LAN side.
- On the basement switch, connect the designated "WAN" port to the cable modem's Ethernet output. (Use the remaining ports for whatever you like.)
Best Answer
Its okay to have multiple routers on the network, as long as they are configured correctly. You want to have a router, not a switch, acting as your gateway connected to your cable modem. This router should have Wi-Fi disabled and it should be running a DHCP server to assign out IP addresses.
Your second (and any subsequent routers), should be configured to disable the DHCP server. Also, you should be connecting the connection to the first router into one of the LAN ports of the router, rather than the WAN port. You'll also need to setup a static IP address for this router that is outside the range of the DHCP server, maybe something like
192.168.0.2.With this configuration all of your machines will be on the same network and should be getting their IP addresses from the DHCP server on the first router.