Anas Ismail Khan

A few days back, I was talking to a friend I picked up online, who happens to be an Indian, and as we were discussing some things loosely related to cricket, it hit me.

There’s this whole thing about Pakistan vs India matches. People, adults and teens and kids alike, all gather together some place where the live game is projected on a large screen. There’s something too exciting about this even for those who aren’t into cricket much. There’s this feeling of unity all thanks to this rivalry between the two countries. Note that this rivalry here, that I speak of,  is much more of a friendly rivalry, and there’s technically nothing wrong with it, with all those cheeky advertisements and all, it’s all about showing the other country who plays better.

The big idea is that a stadium, funded by both countries, be built, with the consent of the governments of both, where all matches involving Pakistan and India take place (tough but allow me to add “when possible”), preferably those that the two countries play against each other, and people from both the countries could come and watch them together. 

The goal: Create two separate networks, each with its own router. Both routers will have different security and SSID, while the WAN settings of A are configured to connect to the internet while B, being a subnetwork of the first, will connect to the internet through it.

Now the thing is that the LAN and WAN IP addresses can not be in the same subnet, so here’s what I did. I changed the subnet of A from 255.255.255.0 to 255.255.0.0 .. Also, I changed to IP Adress to 192.168.1.1. That’s all the config you need to do in Router A, assuming it is already configured to connect to the internet.

Now get an Ethernet cable and plug one end of it into any of the LAN ports (some reccomend the first) in A, and the other end into the WAN port of B. Login to it’s portal.. yeah it’s at 192.168.0.1. Though I don’t see why dynamic shouldn’t  work, but since it didn’t for me, let’s assume it won’t work for anyone else. Select Static IP in the startup wizard and you’d be greeted by a number of blank input-boxes.  Fill them in as follows:

IP Address: 192.168.1.2

Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

Gateway: 192.168.1.1

Primary DNS Server: 192.168.1.1

That ought to do the trick. You might want to do a reboot, but that’s not always necessary.

Umm, yeah, so let’s get to it. What was the first interpretation? oh that’s right, Router B to act as a wireless access point for A.

So, A has an internet connection and B has to be connected to it via a cable and configured in such a manner that the connected devices automatically connect to either of the two devices with the best signal as you move about, and as B is acting as an access points, all data B receives and sends would of course need to be sent to and received from A. (Pardon me if something I’ve written doesn’t seem correct, I’m merely a noob and explaining in terms your grandma could understand.)

This was actually pretty simple, so I’d just list the steps leaving out the screenshots.

1. Get an ethernet cable and insert one end of it into any LAN port on A, and the other end into the first LAN port of B. (actually I’m not sure if it has to be the first port or not.)
2. Login to the web interface of B and set the SSID, i.e the name of the network, and the security settings of B to be the same as those of A. e.g. if A is called “narlges” and it’s using WPA, with passphrase “flutterwacken”, then you need to apply the same settings on B.
3. Making sure that both A and B are in the same subnet, change the LAN IP adress of B to something other than that of A. So if the IP of A is 192.168.0.1, then you can set B to 192.168.0.X. Basically X can be any number between 0 and 255 except 1 as it is being used by A.
4. Disable DHCP on B as it won’t be assigning IP addresses and all.
5. Other wireless and radio settings like channel and all need to be the same too
6. Reboot both routers?

And basically that’s it.

I have recently been faced with this challenge, partly for learning, as it’s kind of an enthusiast thing and partly because I might actually need to to that in the near future. Since the title might seem a bit vague or ambigous to some, let me first make a bit clear exactly what it is I’m after. How about we start by listing interpretations? (My goal and the whole point of all this can be seen to later.)

Router A= TL-WR841N, and this one’s configured to connect to the internet using PPTP

Router B = Tenda W268R,

1. I have two routers, and I want B to act as a wireless access point to extend it’s range.
2. I have two routers, and I want B to have a LAN of it’s own, with A as a gateway providing access to the internet.
3. I want to do either of the things listed above over a wireless bridge.

Let me say this much. I am a newbie. I’m not much of a networking guy, nor do I really know how this is going to work. I’m simply Google-ing and experimenting.

In the next few posts, I will explain what I have tried and what was the outcome.

We’re all pirates

Is survival

Is dedication

The more we share, the more we have. – Leonard Nimoy

Rest In Peace Mr. Spock.

Doesn’t exist

We have till then to develop the hover-board, while rumor has it that Nike has already started working on the self-lacing shoes. In which case, I guess, it’s also safe to put off the hover-conversion, I’ve been dreaming of for my car, till then.