Router Cascading - A Complete Guide

With your help I was able to use two routers, two 200 ft lengths of uf undergroud electric wire and direct burial cat5 cable to connect with another computer 700 feet away. Thanks

Hello , Thank you for such a beautiful router cascading guide. I was stuck with connecting my two routers and with your help I did it. Thank you

Thank you for a very clear summary - I finally got a 3 router oe 1 router and 2 switches) cascade working after reading this.

One question - is there any benefit to having UNPNP activated in the router and / or the switches?

First of all thanks for your comments.

@DOC Do you mean uPnP (Universal Plug and Play ) ?

Thank goodness. There are so many guides to doing this online, but so many of them assume the reader is ENTIRELY incompetent. Not to mention many of them refer to specific models only.
The subsequent clutter and excessive information in such guides made them neigh unusable.

No my routers are up and running without a hitch.

So well done, thank you.

Thank you, its very informative

Thank you, its very informative

Thanks Ravi for your comment

will the second router run slower?

No Tim, there is no speed difference you can see.

Hi Siju , I have two wireless routers one from Linksys and the second one from Netgear. How can I wireless cascade these two wireless routers ? I hope you can help me

@ Ravi

Traditionally Wireless routers are not allowed to cascade wireless but you can do it if if both routers are WDS enabled. You may need third party firmware to do wireless cascade. To know more details about WDS please click on the link below.

http://www.corenetworkz.com/2011/04/mportance-of-wds-in-interconnecting-two.html

Thanks for such a wonderful router cascading guide.

Is this same for all routers ? I mean can I use the same trick for my Dlink router ?

I was planning on running a powerline connection from the main router to a more centralized location and connect the secondary router. I was going to disable the wireless features on the main router and only use the secondary router for wireless access. In this case do you recommend WAN to LAN or LAN to LAN?

In this case I recommend you to follow Internet-LAN method( Second method mentioned in the original article).

I have a 2wire dsl wireless modem (2701hg-b) which doesn't reach out to my husbands mancave which is triple insulated bc we have a band,so we ran some cat5 out there & I then tried this method with the 2nd router being a linksys wireless- g model wrt54GL. We only want to use the wireless part of the linksys router to connect to our iPhones & iPads when we are out in mancave. It shows the network & will join but then Internet doesn't work. Is there some other step we need? I used the LAN to LAN method. Don't want to turn off wireless signal on main router bc have other wireless devices in the house. Please help!

@Drmmrgrl

The connection should be like this.

1. Connect one end of Ethernet cable on the LAN Port of DSL Modem and the other end on the WAN(Internet) Port of your Linksys Router (WRT54GL)

2. Ensure that you can go online with Linksys Router with a wired connection. If not please configure Linksys Router according to the guide below.
http://www.corenetworkz.com/2011/05/how-to-setup-linksys-wireless-router.html

On Linksys Router, you should ensure that wireless is turned on.
If you need further assistance please comment here.

Ok, I tried both methods & several others & couldn't get it to work then I couldn't get on the Internet at all on even my wired computer using my 2wire. I had to unhook Ethernet from the linksys router & refresh my 2wire b4 it would work again. I looked at the link that you sent me & my setupn page on the linksys router is nothing like that. It has options for acces point, wds & access point, bridge mode & 2 others cant remember off top off my head. It was already on access point & their was nothing about this in any artcle so i left it on there, should i have changed that? earlier when I set it up, I used my laptop which was connected wirelessly to the 2wire (it wouldn't work hooked to my desktop that the 2wire is wired to) I did check it to make sure I could get on Internet & it worked fine , which now that I think about, is weird bc it wasn't plugged into the 2wire at all. So was it picking up the wireless signal from the 2wire? Is there something else I could use besides the linksys router that would be easier ? Don't wanna spend a lot of money, mancave toys already cost enough, lol! thanks!

Since you mentioned your iPhones can connect the wireless network from Linksys but unable to access Internet, it seems your Linksys router doesn't get Internet from your DSL modem.
So please follow the steps below.

1. Connect your computer/laptop to WRT54GL with a cable (LAN Port1 of Linksys)

2. Type 192.168.1.1 on the address bar of browser and press enter. If it is not working to learn the login IP of Linksys follow the instructions provided in the link below.
http://www.corenetworkz.com/2010/07/how-to-find-login-ip-address-of-router.html

3. Login Linksys WRT54GL using the username and passowrd (same as provided in my previous link)(http://www.corenetworkz.com/how-to-setup-linksys-wireless-router.html

4. Change the Router IP Address (or called Local IP Address) to 192.168.6.1 and save settings


5. Click on Wireless tab and change the wireless name to a different name (Eg: mywireless) and click on Save.

Now check if you can access Internet from your iPhones (If it is working you should go and enable wireless security).

Ok, I tried this & it still didn't work. On iPhones & iPad & laptop, it shows the wireless network & you can connect to it, but when you try to search the Internet, it won't work & tells you there's a connection error. If you have an email address or some way for me to post pics on this blog I would show you what my router setting page looks like so you could see if I'm doing something wrong. Thanks for all your help!

Hi Drmmgrl,

I apologize for the late reply. It is the holy-week and you can understand.

My email id:

admin@corenetworkz.com

Can any and all routers be cascaded or only certain ones? Thanks to your tutorial I was able to change the IP address on my Cisco E2500 and connected it's WAN port to a LAN port of my main router (TP-Link R470T+) and it worked flawlessly. Then I tried my new EnGenius ESR150H router/AP and couldn't make it work for the life of me. Called EnGenius and they couldn't make it work either from LAN to WAN. They sent me to "Level 2" tech support and they couldn't make it work either. It seems to work okay LAN to LAN but I didn't want it that way and think that EnGenius tech support and I are both missing something... hence my question, "can any and all router/AP units be cascaded?"

You can cascade all routers without having any issues. Follow the link below to learn how to cascade multiple routers.

http://www.corenetworkz.com/how-to-connect-three-routers-in-your.html

can i use this technique with different brands of router?

Yes, you can cascade different brands of router.

i already have 2 routers connected using your technique. and i want to add another router. so i connected the new router with different IP address. the problem is, i can only connect to the internet if i use 1 meter length of LAN cable, but i cannot connect if i use the longer 15 meters cable... need your help.. thanks...

This issue seems to be from the Ethernet cable because 1 meter cable is working fine. Perhaps the 15 meter cable is bad.

I recommend you to follow the steps provided in the link below on the computer which is connected with 15meter cable.

http://www.corenetworkz.com/2010/08/i-cannot-go-online-internet.html

Thank you Alex for the guide
much appreciated

Wow, I looked everywhere and I tried everything. It was so easy and mine works just right

Thank you so much!

In the cascading modem method using the Lan/Wan method, how do I prevent wireless device from connecting to the first modem that comes off the internet cable. The first modem is 10.0.0.1 and the second modem is 192.168.1.1

I cascaded a tp-link ac1750 and a Linksys wrt 1900 ac. I used lan to wan and have two different network sign-ins. I have successfully used both with 2 aplle 4s phones and two kindle fires. But everytime I try and use the linksys network with a dell and Hp laptop I get an error 651 when trying to introduce the new network. The linksys ip is
192.168.1.1 and the TP-Link is 192.168.0.1. I am using the Linksys as the secondary. Any help would be appreciated.

@Lane,

Try to delete the previously saved Wireless networks and try to reconnect.


To check for error 651, follow the instructions provided in the link below.

http://www.corenetworkz.com/2011/07/error-651-modem-connecting-device-has.html

For the LAN-LAN connection, most often the recommendation is to set the SSID, pwd, etc the same for both routers; my purpose is to add a newer, faster wireless router (802.11ac, 5GHz) to connect with the Ethernet port of the obligatory Comcast base modem/router, and ignore its slower, weaker, 2.4GHz limited wireless function. My thinking is to give the new router a different SSID, so it is clear which wireless connection I'm using, and not worry about devices getting confused or dropping while trying to decide which dueling signal is stronger (I don't care, just which is faster). Does this not make good logical sense?

@Die Fledermaus

Good thought and it will definitely work.

I have a 2wire WAN cascading into a Belkin LAN, which then feeds Wi-Fi to my computer. I'm having trouble forwarding a port through all that. Any suggestions for a networking noob?

@Raymond,

If you want open a port in your network, it is better keep entire network in same IP address range. Eg: 192.168.1.X

It is also important to open the same port in all routers unless the firewall is disabled.

For better suggestions, it is important to know your network diagram with IP address range set in each routers.

Thanks for the excellent guide ! :D

I am unable to access the second routers configuration page. I have tried to find its ip from cmd. But when entering that ip in web browser, it doesn't load.

Which IP address you have used from command prompt? You should try the default gateway address.

Thanks for giving important information.. keep posting

Thanks for giving important information.. keep posting