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Help set Linksys router as switch

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scooter4n

Member
Joined
Nov 14, 2001
Location
Portland OR.
This is what I have.
DSL modem in to Linksys WRT54G wireless router.
Now I'm little short on wired ports, and I want to add 8 port BEFSR81 router and use is as a switch.
How do I set that up?
what Local IP address should I give to the 8 port router, and other stuff, to make it in to a switch.
Thanks
 
Simple.

Turn off DHCP on the router you want to use as a switch. Connect one of the wired ports to the other router. Give it some IP outside of the DHCP range that isn't being used.

Done.
 
yes, make the wireless router something like 192.168.1.1 put the 8 port as 192.168.1.2 and have all your PC's be something like 192.168.1.101-110(or however many PC's you have).

After that yeah just disable DHCP and you should be good to go.
 
All he needs to do is disable dhcp (and wireless?) on the other router(s) and uplink them via their regular ports (don't use the wan/internet port) and don't bother with IP's and that's it...

-edit-
Looking at all those ports...if they all need heavy traffic you'll find the WRT54 isn't upto handling all that 24/7 and you may be better off building a smoothwall pc in the end.
 
Lancelot said:
All he needs to do is disable dhcp (and wireless?) on the other router(s) and uplink them via their regular ports (don't use the wan/internet port) and don't bother with IP's and that's it...

-edit-
Looking at all those ports...if they all need heavy traffic you'll find the WRT54 isn't upto handling all that 24/7 and you may be better off building a smoothwall pc in the end.

No you do need to IP them. By default they will all be 192.168.1.1, and you can't have multiple devices on the same network with the same IP.
 
No he doesn't need to ip them if he uplinks the other router(s) through their regular (switch) ports. This bypasses the dhcp server completely and only the first real router handles dhcp. The downside to this is it's costing ports, so if he uplinks via the wan/internet port he does need to ip them...
 
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