I have 2 routers, 1 wired and 1 wireless, can I get devices connected to the wireless router to see eachother?

August 19, 2008 12:27 PM

I have two routers, one wired one wireless. The wired router is connected to the internet and the wireless router is connected to the wired router. My iPhone and MacBook are both connected to the internet via the wireless router and in turn the wired router. I'm trying to get them to see each other. How?

Router (wired) has ip address 192.168.0.3 and router (wireless) has ip address 192.168.0.86 . The iPhone and MacBook are both connected to the wireless router. However iPhone apps such as remote, files and things can't see the other device over the wireless network and I'm forced to disconnect from the internet and create a computer to computer network using the MacBook in order to use these applications. For a number of complicated reasons the router setup needs to stay like this (1 wired 1 wireless) so I'm afraid that changing that isn't an option. I'm clueless when it comes to all this. Is what I'm trying to do possible? Thanks for any guidance that anyone can provide. I can give more information if needed!

posted by anglaise to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

What IP addresses are the iPhone and MacBook reporting?
posted by mr_roboto at 12:40 PM on August 19, 2008

Both devices are on the same subnet. I suppose both are garden variety "home" routers, where being on the same subnet means either you have a configuration error, or one of the two is not a router but a switch, or has it's routing function disabled. Perhaps the wireless router is just used as an access point?
posted by uncle harold at 12:43 PM on August 19, 2008

Theoretically, you want to set up your wireless router to be on a different subnet and hand out a different range of IP address (the subnet is the third number in the IP address, ie 192.168.subnet.x). The computers hooked to the wireless router need to be on the same subnet that the wireless is providing, and the wireless needs to connect to the subnet of the wired router. This should theoretically all be automatic, but sometimes when you hook things together like this weird things happen.

It should look something like this:

Internet
|
(insert your internet provided IP here)
Wired Router
(192.168.0.3)
|
(192.168.0.86)
Wireless Router
(192.168.1.3)
|
(192.168.1.xxx)
iPhone, MacBook, etc.
posted by cimbrog at 1:28 PM on August 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Easy. Plug your internet into your wireless router and plus your wired router into it. Turn off DHCP on your wired router.
posted by wongcorgi at 4:44 PM on August 19, 2008

@cimbrog: The "subnet" is NOT the third octet in an IP address. It's something completely different than the IP address you see.

I have a similar setup at home and it's really pretty simple. I have a wired (VoIP) router which is connected to my modem, and wireless router attached to it, providing all of my wired/wireless connections to my computers. Here's a summary of my setup:

Wired router IP is 192.168.1.0, with a subnet of 255.255.255.0
Wired router gives out 192.168.1.100 to .200 via DHCP to anything connected to it.
Wired router is set to get it's external (WAN) IP from the modem through DHCP.

Wireless router IP is 192.168.2.0 with a subnet of 255.255.255.0
Wireless router gives out 192.168.2.100 to .200 via DHCP to anything connected to it.
Wireless router is set to get it's external (WAN) IP from the wired router through DHCP.

This means the wireless router will get 192.168.1.100 (usually) from the wired one, and anything else connected directly to the wired router will be able to see it easily. Similar, anything I connect to the wireless router gets something between 192.168.2.100 and .200, and since it's all set to the same subnet, will see everything attached to the wireless router.

It's pretty straight forward and alot more logical to work with if you set it up this way.
DHCP should be setup on any devices connecting to the wireless router, so they all get an IP within it's DHCP pool (.100 to .200) and get assigned the same subnet setting as well (255.255.255.0). This is the key to them seeing each other.

I would guess your problem is incorrectly setup subnets. It looks like your routers are subnetting the 192.168.0.X space already which is really pointless in your case, and just causes more headaches. Take an hour or two and reset them all to something more logical and blocked out.
posted by mr.anthony337 at 11:06 PM on August 19, 2008

The "subnet" is NOT the third octet in an IP address.

Derp. Yeah, network, not subnet. I was assuming a 255.255.255.0 subnet mask, there.

We basically said the same thing, but go with Mr.Anthony - he takes it a bit farther.
posted by cimbrog at 7:30 AM on August 20, 2008