[ale] question about ganging routers together

[Ron Frazier]

David,

Thanks for clearing that up. It was extremely confusing at the time.

Ron

On 8/1/2011 3:40 PM, David Tomaschik wrote:
> On 08/01/2011 01:45 PM, Ron Frazier wrote:
>    
>> Hi guys.  My schedule only lets me get on the list intermittently.  It
>> takes a bit of time to keep up with all the postings.  I'm going to try
>> to catch up on the old posts, including any which may have been old
>> replies to my messages since I was last on a couple of weeks ago.  In
>> any case, I have a question about ganging routers together.  I hope I
>> can explain this in a way that makes sense.
>>
>> I have my main router 192.168.83.1 (LAN address) which connects to the
>> internet.  I wanted to test another wireless router 192.168.79.1 (LAN
>> address).  Both routers are set up to provide DHCP service.  I plugged
>> router 79 into a LAN port on router 83.  I meant to run the cable from
>> the WAN port on router 79 to the LAN port on router 83.  However, I
>> actually ran the cable from LAN to LAN port by mistake.  I have
>> subsequently fixed the mistake, but what they did really confused me, so
>> I hope some of you can shed some light on it.  While the cables were
>> wrong, I logged into 79 wirelessly, and proceeded to access the
>> internet, which worked just fine.  I had expected to get an IP address
>> from router 79 which would be something like 192.168.79.2, etc.
>> However, when I tried to access the control panel for 79, I could not.
>> I ultimately found out that my IP address was coming from 83, and was
>> something like 192.168.83.2, etc.  I thought, surely I'm not wirelessly
>> connected to 83.  I verified again that I was connected to 79.  It took
>> me quite a while to figure out what was wrong.  Once I fixed the cables,
>> everything was fine, and I got my IP from 79 as I should, and I was able
>> to access it's control panel.  I'm just wondering if anyone can tell me
>> what was happening, and why I wasn't getting an IP address from 79 even
>> though I was logged wirelessly into it.  For that matter, I'm not really
>> sure how my internet connection was working at all with it wired that
>> way.  Any ideas are appreciated.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>      
> You'd effectively bridged the two routers into one network.  Both
> wireless networks, both LAN networks, and the "LAN" side of the
> controller chips of both routers were all on one physical LAN.  So when
> your system requested an IP address (DHCP DISCOVER), most likely both
> routers responded with a DHCP response.  If the computer got the
> response from the '83' router first, that's the IP it took.  There's a
> million reasons why one would get a response from the other router
> first, including differences in firmware, chipset, etc.
>
> David
>
>    

-- 

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Ron Frazier

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