> there is no configuration involved - just don't use the WAN port. POOF your > router has become an access point. when I do this, I also disable the > internal DHCP server, to avoid conflicts with my previously existing DHCP > server. but your situation is a little different. > > -wes >
As far as I can see, there is really no good argument nor any advantage to not do this. A true wifi access point is typically more of an enterprise class device. It doesn't have a WAN port because it's designed just to uplink the wireless network traffic to a switch/router and connect with the rest of the enterprise network. As Wes alluded to, the routing happens on the WAN port as a routers primary purpose is to connect two separate ip subnets. So if you just connect your Belkin via a switch port to your upstream switch/router and use static ips for the devices hanging off the Belkin then you should be all set. Ideally, the way I would configure this is have both wireless devices use DHCP but have separate pools so there's no conflicts. So in your case this might look something like: Belkin N900: 192.168.2.1 Upstream Router: 192.168.2.103 Belkin N900 DHCP pool: 192.168.2.2 - 192.168.2.102 Upstream Route DHCP pool: 192.168.2.104 - 192.168.2.204 Netmask for all of this is: 255.255.255.0 This way you have plenty of ip addrs for each wifi ap switch/router device that are clearly defined and easily remembered. You can even print out a piece of paper with the ip nets and tape them to the device. If you want configure a device with a static ip on one of the two ip nets, just ping ip addrs in the dhcp pool from a computer that has an ip on that ip net to find one that is not in use. Or to even one step further, you can break those DHCP pools in half. For example: Belkin DHCP Pool: 192.168.2.2 - 192.168.2.52 Belkin Static ip addrs: 192.168.2.53. - 192.168.2.103 Let me know if I can be of any help in getting this all setup. Cheers, Mike _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
