Making office LAN wireless

[kmac]

Hi,

I want to make a small office LAN accessible by wirless devices ( printer with wireless print server)

I have a Netgear DG834GT into which I plug the uplink from my office network (lan port 1). I can connect my computers wired to the other LAN ports and they get an IP address from the lan - 10.0.25.125 for example.

The issue I have is how to make the LAN available so wireless devices can also connect to it? Any help appreciated

[aidanjt]

You need a wireless access point and connect it to you router, and it's just a matter of associating the devices with that AP.

[kmac]

You need a wireless access point and connect it to you router, and it's just a matter of associating the devices with that AP.

The router has built in wireless capabilities - I want to use that - issue is how to configure to use the built in wirless capability of the DG834GT

[Funkstar]

Does the DG834GT have an AP mode?

I've tried this in the past with other routers and haven't had any success, ended up just getting a regular AP and using that.

[kmac]

Does the DG834GT have an AP mode?

I've tried this in the past with other routers and haven't had any success, ended up just getting a regular AP and using that.

Will check - I hope it does as I got it for that purpose

[kmac]

Does the DG834GT have an AP mode?

I've tried this in the past with other routers and haven't had any success, ended up just getting a regular AP and using that.

Okay it should be able to be configured just as an AP - just need to find out how

[scaryjim]

Hang on, am I getting this right? You've got an ADSL modem router, and you want to use it as a switch and access point - you're not connecting it to an ADSL line at all?

It's certainly possible, your main issue is likely to be accessing the router's web-based admin interface. The router will expect to use its own DHCP server and you may have difficulty connecting to the router if your PCs are getting their IP addresses from a different DHCP server.

As far as what you want to do: disable the router's DHCP server, and give it a static IP address on the same network as the office (presumably that's 10.0.25.* from what you've already said) - you may have to do this in isolation from the office network (i.e. only have one client machine plugged into the router - nothing else). Turn on the wireless AP, enable WPA encryption and (if I was you) also enable MAC filtering, which allows you to specify the hardware address of devices that can connect to the network. With the router's DHCP server turned off wireless devices should then get their IP addresses off the office network.

All the options to do the above should be fairly obvious in the web-based admin interface. I've managed a couple of netgear routers in the past and never had any problems with them...

An unusual choice of hardware for the purpose, but you should be able to make it work.

[aidanjt]

A good router wont require use of it's internal DHCP service to work. I thought this was just an infrastructure query. Read the friendly manual for specifics on configuring your router properly. And for the love of God, please enable WPA-PSK wireless encryption.

[kmac]

Scaryjim - that's exactly what I want to do - went to a local shop and that was all the hardware thgey had and needed to get it done today so went for that.

I will enable WPA and MAC address filtering (and I also disable broadcast of the SSID as well)

Thanks for your help with this. Will have to try later on today to see if I can get it to work. You are right about accessing the admin page - I can only do this by retoring the factory setting of the router and then just connecting one computer to it as the IP address of the router needs to be 192.168.0.1 in order to access the admin/config pages

Hang on, am I getting this right? You've got an ADSL modem router, and you want to use it as a switch and access point - you're not connecting it to an ADSL line at all?

It's certainly possible, your main issue is likely to be accessing the router's web-based admin interface. The router will expect to use its own DHCP server and you may have difficulty connecting to the router if your PCs are getting their IP addresses from a different DHCP server.

As far as what you want to do: disable the router's DHCP server, and give it a static IP address on the same network as the office (presumably that's 10.0.25.* from what you've already said) - you may have to do this in isolation from the office network (i.e. only have one client machine plugged into the router - nothing else). Turn on the wireless AP, enable WPA encryption and (if I was you) also enable MAC filtering, which allows you to specify the hardware address of devices that can connect to the network. With the router's DHCP server turned off wireless devices should then get their IP addresses off the office network.

All the options to do the above should be fairly obvious in the web-based admin interface. I've managed a couple of netgear routers in the past and never had any problems with them...

An unusual choice of hardware for the purpose, but you should be able to make it work.

[scaryjim]

Scaryjim - that's exactly what I want to do - went to a local shop and that was all the hardware thgey had and needed to get it done today so went for that.

Ah, that takes me back - been a long time since I've had one of those jobs though.

Hope the install went well for you

[kmac]

Just wanted to report back that all went well and my Dg834Gt is now a wireless access point ( without using modem or using it as a DHCP server)

Thanks all for your advice especially scaryjim who quite scarily was spot on with his recommendation