I Have A Modem/Router And Want To Use It Together With Another Modem/Router

3/7/2016 | raybbr FReeperville http://www.Freerepublic.com

[raybbr]

A while back ATT sold out their CT business to Frontier. It was awful for a while. It took me almost a year to get them to bump me up to 6000 Kbps on my DSL line.

It has gotten better and the price is half what I was paying ATT.

I have a modem/router from them (Netgear 7550) and am using that. When I had ATT I bought a Netgear N600 DGND3700v2 Modem/Router and it worked pretty well.

Lately (well for the past three months) I have been losing connection to the internet on several devices. For example: I'll be watching "Covert Affairs" on Amazon Prime on my Kindle and in the middle of the show it will go into loading mode and stop playing. I'll have to shut off the wireless on the Kindle turn it back on a reacquire an IP address and it'll work. For a while. It could be five minutes, ten minutes or a half hour. This happens on laptops, the Smart TV and even my son's iPod. I have to reboot the router once a laptop loses the connection. Turning it off/on doesn't reconnect.

I have made several calls to Frontier and the serviceman has come out twice. I got this Modem/Router about three months ago.

I called yesterday and the tech service guy (to Frontier's credit I've never spoken to anyone in service who had a foreign accent) said I need a router with N600 or higher because the various devices are battling for bandwidth from the router. I have no idea what the 7550 is capable of since there is nothing available that I can find that tells me what it is.

What I'd like to do, if possible, is connect the N600 Netgear to the 7550 and use that, or even both, as wireless routers. Apparently the way Frontier packets their signal requires the 7550 to be used as the modem. At least that's the way the guy explained it as I recall.

Is there a way to connect the N600 to the 7550 and use the N600, which is dual band for my wireless network?

Thanks in advance.

[raybbr]

Can you disable the modem functionality of the N600 Netgear?

Not sure. How would one get the signal from the modem to the other router. I understand some routers have a WAN port for that.

[aimhigh]

Lately (well for the past three months) I have been losing connection to the internet on several devices.

My router did the same thing in the months before it died. They have a life span of about 4 years.

[raybbr]

Set the first router IP to 192.168.3.1 and the second router to 192.168.1.1...then piggy back them...worked for me on a Cisco e4200 and a Netgear router. Now I have 4 different wireless networks.

They are both DSL Modem/Routers. Not sure if that makes a difference to what you offered.

[raybbr]

Move to Romania

Only if "the Bern's" going to pay for it....

[tacticalogic]

How would you connect the two?

Depends on the routers, but I'd guess you probably need a crossover cable.

[lefty-lie-spy]

That will work.

[Scrambler Bob]

M4L router

[Jeff Chandler]

some routers have a WAN port for that.

Yeah, a short length of CAT5.

I'm not sure using two modems would be a good idea. It might be better to get one working well. How far away are the devices from the wifi signal? Can you raise the modem higher? Can you position it to remove obstacles? Is there a firmware upgrade you can get?

[gcraig]

I have an AT&T Uverse router that provides the WAN interface. I have a Linksys WRT54G router that connects to the Uverse router using a CAT 5 cable. I run the Linksys router in DHCP mode. I also have a Linksys N900 router that I imaged using dd-wrt so I could bridge it to the Uverse router. I have a computer connected to this router upstairs and the bridged dd-wrt Linksys N900 wirelessly connects to the Uverse router.

Everything works great except the bandwidth I get on the computer connected to the N900 dd-wrt router is about 20% of the bandwidth available to the other computers that are connected on the WLAN. I can live with it because it’s nominally 5Mb, and it’s just a homework machine that runs some paypal automation that I wrote, so it doesn’t need to be blazing fast.

The dd-wrt configuration is a bit tricky but if you take your time and read the instructions then it can be done. I was unable to bridge networks using the default Linksys configurations, and was only successful when I imaged the N900 with dd-wrt.

[raybbr]

I'm not sure using two modems would be a good idea. It might be better to get one working well. How far away are the devices from the wifi signal? Can you raise the modem higher? Can you position it to remove obstacles? Is there a firmware upgrade you can get?

I don't lose a connection the network. I lose connection to the internet. I can see that my network is up all over the house. I just can't go out on the interwebs. This happens right next to the router.

[B Knotts]

Are you logged in?

But, seriously, what you would normally do is put the N600 in AP mode, and disable DHCP on one of the routers. However, it doesn’t look like the N600 can be put into a true AP mode.

This guy says you can sorta kinda do it, though:

http://damien.co/general/using-netgear-n600-dgnd3700v1-extend-home-network-8747

[raybbr]

Thanks, I might try that on a day when I’ve had some sleep and the wife and kids aren’t home. It really doesn’t look that hard.

[dayglored]

Modem/router/wifi tech help questions ... PING!

You can find all the Windows Ping list threads with FR search: just search on keyword "windowspinglist".

Thanks to ShadowAce for the Tech ping!

Not a Windows-specific question, but I'm sure a lot of you are technically minded and wouldn't mind helping a fellow FReeper.

[whistleduck]

Simple. Hire some tech puke to fix it.

Yu might be confused friend, this aint a techy blog.

[BipolarBob]

Are you insane??? You want a bunch of baby router/modems running around the house? Ever try to potty train them? They chew up everything around them. They’re very territorial. And just try getting a good nights sleep with them in bed with their off-key snoring. No thank you. There’s a reason people keep them separate.

[tophat9000]

Ok.. I'm.a network engineer in im really trying to understand want you asking

First are you talking about having two wan.connection. to the internet?

That different then having two router

[tophat9000]

Ok I reread your post...

Ditch using the old n600 modem router... you could use it but I've had that particular one and I've had bad experience with it being flaky

so do one of two things. have to isp send you a new modem router combo they say will work with your setup

or better... have the isp send you a new stand-alone modem then buy your own high quality wifi router to connect to it

adsl modem router combo can be very problematic in troubleshooting as its combining two devices that really function better as separate items

if you want to go with the modem router combo have the ISP send you one and then put all the responsibility isp for its functionality

what I don't understand is if the isp is pointing fingers your current Wi-Fi router ..and are they providing it.. that mean if they think that's the problem... they need to send you a replacement that’ll will work for you

[OneHun]

You have to bridge the Netgear 7550 which means that it will act as a modem only.  Connect it to your Netgear N600 which will became your "new" router, including its wireless capabilities.

One of the descriptions:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28137734-Bridging-7550

Try to search with the following entry: "bridging Netgear 7550" without the quotations.

 

[stylin_geek]

Sounds similar to my setup. I have designated wireless routers in my house.

I have one WRT54G Linksys router for computers and the other two are for streaming video to our TV’s.

Plus, I like the idea of having another firewall between the router firewall and my lan. At one time I was running a vpn tunnel through my broadband router to a server and it was nice to be able to put the server between firewalls.

[Woodman]

If you are only losing your connection to the internet, adding another router downstream from your primary connection will not help. It sounds to me like you have a problem with your DSL service itself. You can plug any router into a physical connection on the primary router and you will create another network. The trick is getting both networks to talk to each other so that you can connect across devices. I’ve not been able to do that with the extra hardware I have. I forget the terminology, but it basically needs one set as a switch and the other as a router to work.