Sorry, a wifi question.
 

Sorry, I know wifi stuff is a PITA.

But...

So I have internet in the house and is working fine. The existing setup is an Asus wifi router plugged into the internet connection on the wall via a cat5 cable. My computer has a cat5 cable attaching to the wifi router and I get the internet fine.

There is an apartment at the back of my house and I want the tenant to be able to use my internet. So I've connected a cat5 cable to the Asus router I previously mentioned and run a cat5 cable through the wall, around the house and into the apartment. I can connect a computer to the cable and get internet.

I want to connect another wifi router in the apartment to the cat5 cable so the tenant can wifi to their own router and get my internet.

I can't get the new tp-link router to see the internet. I've locally connected to it and set a password, but it doesn't see the internet. I've tried putting the tp-link's cat5 into my Asus router and also tried directly into the internet connection on the wall - so it's in parallel with my Asus one, but that doesn't work either.

Any ideas? And thanks.

Routing and IP address confusion.

Easier to draw out and such, and I have a scrum meeting in 10 minutes, but I'll be back with a pic and some network address info for you

I had this exact setup before I retired. Most home routers by default use 192.168.1.0 network. So both of your routers are likely competing for this address space and this causes a conflict. Just connect the asus router to the wan port of the tp-link then change the IP address of the tp-link to something other than the default. So if your asus router is is using 192.168.1.0, configure the tp-link to use 192.168.10.0.

Consumer routers by default auto assign IP addresses.

They broadcast themselves as DHCP servers.

Devices look for them to pick up an address lease.

Two routers on the same network acting as DHCP servers is no bueno as they will curb stomp each other.

You want to login into the TP Link back end and set it to Bridge Mode so it stops acting as a DHCP server/ router. I would also switch it from dynamic IP addressing to using a static address.

Your primary router is probably something like 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1. Check the Connected Devices page on the primary router to see what's currently attached and what IP addresses they use. Assign the TP Link an address not currently in use.

You also have WAN and LAN (Wide Area Network / Local Area Network) ports on both routers. This is where consumer routers trip people up.

Think of WAN as everything before the primary router and LAN as everything after or everything outside your house vs everything inside your house.

The natural inclination is the primary router is connected to the WAN, in consumer broadband it almost never is. There is another device like an ONT between where the service enters your home and the primary router itself which is the WAN device.

Long story short a TP Link LAN port should be connected to ASUS LAN port.

Some routers like your primary allow you to login over WIFI, some will only provide the back end over ethernet. To get to it open a browser window and try the 192.168.01. /1.1 addresses. They are default for routers but I have seen 192.168.0.254.

If you've never done this then the user / pass is the factory default.

User is almost always simply, admin

Pass should be on the back / bottom of the router.

Most routers have a "WAN" port and then several "LAN" ports. The WAN side faces the Internet and the LAN side faces the PCs/devices that need Internet access.

Normally, the WAN side gets an IP from the service provider, and then the LAN side gets IPs from the router (192.168.0.x, or 192.168.1.x or something similar is common).

It depends upon the routers, but IME, the best way to connect things would be

router #1 (yours) LAN connection ----> router #2 LAN connection. Then access the config of router #2 and disable DHCP. You don't want router #2 giving out addresses to devices that overlap or conflict with router #1. This normally will just extend your network to the second device. In this config, the second router isn't routing, and doesn't need to see the Internet. It's just extending your network, and all of the tenant devices will be on the same network as your devices.

But that may not work or it may be difficult to get that second router setup for that to work easily. I've done similar in the past and it was pretty easy and worked well, but that depends upon the routers.

A second option would be to run a LAN connection from router #1 to the WAN connection of router #2. Then router #2 will get an address from your router, and all of the devices behind router #2 will get addresses from router #2. There is a small benefit to this method because it will somewhat separate the tenant network from your network. You may not want both of you on the same network in case the tenant wants to try to access your stuff or poke around on your devices. That's still possible, but a bit harder to see.

One note for either/both setup would be to make sure that both routers have different SSIDs. So you could have "Bills-wifi" and "Bills-wifi-extended" (or whatever you want). And it's best if they also use different channels/RF bands, but modern routers may be smart enough to do this automatically.

Pic not coming thru to my email, but the above describes the issue.

Thanks Guys, and a BIG thanks. Nice of you to take time out to explain this. I'll try later in the day and see how it goes.

Thank you, you guys. You are absolutely marvellous. It works!

Cool!

What did you do? Connect the cable to the WAN port or....?

I set it up up in Range Extender Mode, then connected via a 20 meter cat5 cable to the box on the wall where the fibre optic cable comes in. So it was effectively running in parallel with the router that my computer is plugged into. I'm guessing it's setup that I ran put a different IP address into it so it didn't clash with the existing one as you suggested - thanks.

The first router, my one - the original Asus one goes into the first rj45 port, so this may be the WAN port, and the second one TP-link went into the next "ördinary" port.

Yay!!!

At the town house, I run a couple of wifi extenders and it works well. Why not get a wifi extender and place it nearest to his apt?

That said, I'm getting ready to move back to my house in the 'burbs and that one just has a wifi router on my desk. I decided to upgrade to a mesh system since the router is on one end of the house, but I want wifi for the whole property.

"Why not get a wifi extender and place it nearest to his apt?""

I already had a 20 meter cable running around the side of th house as GF used to do home office from the apartment. Her system was medical and timed out if it was even fractionally slow. The only way it would work from home was ultra fast fibre broadband and cat5 cable. Wifi made it factionally too slow and it wouldn't work. So already had the cable and at the start I assumed it would be easy :rolleyes:

BTDT. I still have about 20m of cable running from my router to the other part of the house, but it is at least 25 years old.