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I have the following home network setup:

Ground Floor

Typical Wireless router which is connected to WAN/Internet and its LAN IP is 10.0.0.1. DHCP is ON with the address pool set to 10.0.0.100 to 10.0.0.199. I can connect to this router with wired and wireless devices without any issues (i.e access internet etc).

First Floor

From one of the open LAN ports in the router in the ground floor, I connected an ethernet cable and the other end is connected to a 8 port switch which is located in one of the rooms (say room number 101 for identification sake) in the first floor. There are other devices like a desktop PC and second wireless router (with its DHCP ON or OFF) connected to this switch and all of them (including the devices attached to the second wireless router) can connect to the internet.

The problem

So far so good.

Now I wanted WI-Fi in another room (say room number 102) in the first floor so I ran an ethernet cable from the switch in room 101 to room 102 and connected second wireless router. Now if I attach devices to this wireless router I am not able to connect to internet in the attached devices. I have also verified the cable is not faulty as I am able to access internet if connect to this ethernet cable directly.

What else could be the issue? Is length of cable an issue? The rooms 101 and 102 are approximately 30 to 40 feet apart. From what I understand and read in other forums this distance should be fine for extending the LAN.

What is surprising is in room 101, with a shorter cable from the switch to the same second wireless router, the devices attached to it are able to access the internet.

Can somebody explain what's happening here?

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    Is your WLAN router correctly configured to work as a bridge (i.e. no do routing as there already is a router between the Internet and your LAN)?
    – David Tonhofer
    Commented Jul 28, 2014 at 10:53
  • I agree you having a double routing or double NAT problem. Just turning off DHCP is not enough, you need to put those routers in 101 and 102 into bridge mode... Only one router routing, and it should be attached to the modem.
    – Tyson
    Commented Jul 28, 2014 at 11:46
  • 2
    Be sure you're using a LAN port on the second wireless router, and not its WAN port. Cat5e can run 100m (~300') so your 30-40' wouldn't be a problem. Depending on the switch and/or router you're using, you might need a crossover cable, if the ports can't auto sense.
    – peelman
    Commented Jul 28, 2014 at 11:48
  • Are you using a different channels on the routers?
    – Watsche
    Commented Jul 28, 2014 at 13:02
  • @David, No, I have not configured it in bridge mode as I would like the second wireless router to work as ethernet switch in the 102 as well (in fact in room 101 it has already been working in this mode).
    – Rajaraman Subramanian
    Commented Jul 28, 2014 at 14:24

1 Answer 1

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I think I have figured out the issue.

In the meantime I had also observed at times the devices attached to the second wireless router get internet access momentarily (probably whenever they were reattached after the router has been disconnected for sometime) but that was not consistent. This suggested there could be some issue with either the switch capacity (it is a 100 Mbps switch) or not enough power driven to the ethernet cable to room 102. So when I replaced it with a 1 Gbps switch, voila, I was able to get the internet connection consistently !!!

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