Using a Second Router as a Switch/Hub Problem

Okay.

I need a little help here, so if anyone can give me any I'd really appreciate it :P

Recently I'd been trying to play games with other people on my Xbox360 but found that sometimes I could connect, and sometimes I couldn't. We then found out that the NAT is strict.

I then looked into finding out about how to open the NAT and did so, however when I went into the router settings I noticed that I couldn't access the Xbox IP.

Now we've realised that its because my other half is using a Linksys router as the switch without knowing how to change any of the settings.

Last night I tried following a site to change the Subnet to the same as the first router and turning off the DHCP on the second router. Which all worked fine. I had internet access on my laptop (which I'd turned wireless off and connected directly through the second router).

Now the problem I've run into is the Xbox's wont connect to the internet. I've tried automatic ip settings etc and it doesn't even connect to the network, but if I manually change the settings it connects to the network but doesn't have any internet connection.

Does anyone know why this is or can anyone give me a good idea of what I need to put into the xbox settings to make it connect to the network and internet.

This is what my layout looks like:

First Router - 192.168.0.1
DHCP - Enabled 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.200

Second Router - 192.168.0.235
DHCP - Disabled

Xbox 360 Settings -

IP Address - 192.168.0.103
Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0
Gateway - 192.168.0.235 (also tried 0.1)

DNS - Same DNS as what the first router says it is.


Anyone have any idea where I'm going wrong?

Can you say for sure that the 192.168.0.* subnet is the correct IP range for both routers? Here's how I think it should be set up logically. Note, you should disconnect all computers from either router whilst configuring, to avoid IP address conflicts:

Router 1 (ADSL router/modem, connects to the internet, I'm assuming):
- IP address: lowest IP on the appropriate subnet. This will be 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 most likely. I'll assume 192.168.0.1
- Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0. This defines the subnet as covering all IPs in the range 192.168.0.*
- I recommend turning DHCP on in this router.

Router 2:
- IP address: This should be any IP that's addressable by router 1, that is, any IP in the range 192.168.0.* where * is not 1 or 255. Let's use 2.
- So your router 2 has the IP address 192.168.0.2, we want to keep the 192.168.0 the same always, so use the subnet mask 255.255.255.0.
- You should have DHCP turned off in this one. The idea is not to have this one actually doing routing.

Xbox:
- Similarly, you just need to make sure the Xbox is on the 192.168.1.* subnet, where * isn't 1, 2 or 255. Let's make it 3.
- Subnet mask should be the same. There's no real reason you'd ever need a different one than is the default for your router.
- Gateway: I believe you should use the IP address of router 2 as your gateway here.
- DNS: You have a couple of options. You could find the DNS server addresses for your ISP. You could use OpenDNS addresses. Or you could use 192.168.0.1 and allow router 1 to handle DNS.

To test, you could take the Xbox network cable and plug it into a laptop or desktop computer and see if the computer is able to access the interweb.

Brief explanation of subnets:
They're used to divide networks into smaller, more manageable subnetworks. Typically, a device on one subnet can only see devices on the same subnet. Here's an example of subnetting:

Ok, your router uses the IP address 192.168.0.1/24. This means that the first 24 bits of the IP address (8 bits x 3 bytes, which equates to the first three numbers; 192.168.0) will be the same for every device on that subnet. You could then define two subnets, 192.168.0.1/24 and 192.168.1.1/24. Which means that you'd then have two subnets covering the IP ranges 192.168.0.* and 192.168.1.*.

Thank you for answering Mike!, Oh and yeah the first router is 192.168.0.1 but I'm not allowed to change that.

Quick question though. The site I looked at said not to put the second router's IP as something thats within the DHCP range of the first router or it could cause conflicts. Is this true? Cause the DHCP range is 192.168.0.1 - 200. I just want to make sure.

Tried doing it again but this time I can't get any internet into this laptop.

I need to have the router on 192.168.0 subnet but I want to try doing it without having to manually edit everything. I tried 192.168.0.2 but it didn't work >.<

The reason it told you to have the second router outside the DHCP range of the first router is because if the two routers were to disconnect, and then a computer were to connect to the first router and pick up the IP of the second router, the second router wouldn't be able to reconnect. It's an unlikely situation if you're a) always gonna have the two routers connected and b) if you won't have any devices other than router 2 connected to router 1.

The best advice I can give you is to connect another computer in place of the Xbox and run some diagnostics. You should try pinging router 1, router 2, an external IP address and an external domain name. This will confirm connectivity to router 1, connectivity to router 2, connectivity to the internet and whether or not the DNS is working, respectively. At this point I'd expect you to be able to ping router 2 (the first point of contact to the network) but possibly not router 1.

You might already know how to do a ping, but in case you don't, go to start > run, type in 'cmd', hit enter and then type in 'ping [IP address]' where [IP address] is the IP address of your routers/external IP. If you get "REPLY FROM...." then you know there is connectivity. If you get "Request timed out" then you know there's no connectivity.

Can you ping on a macbook? :P secondly, we are in a massive cabin at the end of the first house's garden (awesome little house it is) :P so the first router is in the big house, and the second router is in our cabin because we are no where near the first router. So yeah we will most likely have this second router all the time until we move out pretty much.

Also, whilst connected to the second router, I turned wireless off on here, and I still have access to the internet, when I type in the first router ip for the settings it comes up. So I can directly access it through the second router. But basically, we can't connect directly to the router, cause we're pretty much not allowed to touch that other than port forwarding.
Basically the only computers we can connect are both macbooks and they have to be connected through the second router. This one is already connected via ethernet cable in order to do the setup stuff on the second router.