How to Connect Two Wireless Routers Together

If you wish to extend the range of your Wifi  network, you can purchase an additional wireless router and connect it to your existing router with an Ethernet cable.

The setup is pretty easy, inexpensive and the best part is that your two routers need not have to be from the same manufacturer so, for example, you can easily connect your Linksys (Cisco) router to a router from say Netgear or Belkin.   For instance, I am using a 30m long Ethernet cable to connect my two routers – one is a Linksys WRT 160N (N based) and other one is a WRH54G (G based) and the setup works just perfect.

Important Points to remember

• It is suggested that the length of the LAN cable connecting the two routers should not exceed 100m and that you should avoid having any joints in the cable. LAN cables are pretty cheap – I got a Cat5e cable for 25 ¢/m.
• If you have a compatible router, I suggest upgrading the firmware to DD-WRT as that will slightly boost the wireless signal plus you’ll get access to tons of other settings in your router.
• If you have enabled Wi-Fi security in your previous router, use the same settings in your new router as well.
• It is important that you assign different SSIDs to the two routers else the same network name will appear twice in your wireless network connections window.
• If you don’t remember the username of your router, try these combinations – root + admin, admin + admin, admin + password or admin (as username) and no password.Id
• The default IP address of routers is often 192.168.1.1. Make that you two connected routers have a different IP address else there’ll be a conflict.