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I have a router at home (which I'm calling Router A) that has some port forwarding configured to a specific IP. This was the only way I found to guarantee that my 3DS could reach Nintendo Network for online gaming.

However, now that I added a second router (Router B) as a second access point at home, I need to find a way of making it understand the same private network from Router A.

Routers Architecture

That said, I'm looking for the best way of configuring Router B so that, when that traffic goes to Router A, it understands my 3DS as "192.168.1.20".

Is the best way of doing that turning one of the routers responsible for the DHCP in the entire "ROUTER A + ROUTER B" set?

bertieb
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Minish
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  • Possible duplicate of [Expanding wireless coverage: What are the differences between LAN to LAN and LAN to WAN when it comes to connecting two wireless routers?](https://superuser.com/questions/936062/expanding-wireless-coverage-what-are-the-differences-between-lan-to-lan-and-lan) – Tim_Stewart May 17 '18 at 13:25

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You're on the right track: the optimal solution would most likely to switch the Router B into "bridge mode" and disable its DHCP server function. Then the wireless network provided by router B would be effectively part of the same IP network segment as the wireless network and the wired connections provided by router A.

There might even be a way to configure router B to "extend a wireless network" created by router A, using the wired connection between the routers as a backbone link. If both your routers have the necessary features for that, that might allow the most seamless transitions as you move from the wireless range of router A to router B or vice versa. Both routers would then use the same wireless SSID, but possibly different, non-overlapping radio channels.

telcoM
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  • If router B doesn't have a "ridge mode": Just disable DHCP on B and connect B to A via one of the LAN ports on B, instead of the WAN port. Configure B to have its own ip-address to be in 192.168.1.* (and different from A!!!) . The Wifi on B is best setup with same SSID as A, but using different channels than A. For 2.4GHz keep them at least 2 channels apart to prevent interference as adjacent channels have some overlap. (This is not a concern for 5GHz wifi.) – Tonny May 17 '18 at 09:12
  • @tonny, it's six channels apart for 2.4ghz. the none overlapping channels are 1,6 & 11. Other than that you are correct. – Tim_Stewart May 17 '18 at 13:24
  • @Tim_Stewart A channel has a frequency contour that roughly follows a Bell-curve. Most of the overlap issues are in the 1 channel left and right of the selected channel. The next channel over has already less interference. The 3rd channel (2 channels in between) significantly less (usually not enough to cause major issues). This makes 1,5,9,13 viable and even 1,4,7,10,13 if your clients are close enough to have reasonable signal strength. (Of course, depending on your country, channels 12 and 13 may be not available.) – Tonny May 17 '18 at 13:36
  • @tonny, Hate to break it to you, but if you put your router on ch-3 or ch-9, you would get interference from both 1&6 or 6&11 simultaneously. This can be confirmed with a spectrum analyzer, or if your router shows you signal to noise you can confirm it that way. Just so we are on the same page, I'm talking about 20mhz channel width, obviously this gets worse with 40mhz wide channels. I'm in the u.s so we don't have access to ch-12,13 or 14. https://www.metageek.com/training/resources/why-channels-1-6-11.html – Tim_Stewart May 17 '18 at 13:45
  • I think Tim is talking about a **strictly optimal** case, while Tonny is talking about **acceptable** configurations. – telcoM May 17 '18 at 13:59
  • @Tim_Stewart I agree, but that is assuming you've got other networks around. My phone currently shows 34 where I am now. There is no way in hell I can find any real clean channel here. It doesn't matter which channel I pick for my own AP's, just that I put the AP that needs best performance (will serve most clients) at whatever channel has least load on the spectrum analyzer. And then I find the second low-point on the analyzer and put the 2nd AP there, as long as it is at least 3 channels higher or lower than the 1st AP. – Tonny May 17 '18 at 14:01
  • @telcoM Exactly. I didn't even consider optimal in my thinking. Where I'm living the radio-spectrum is always dirty. – Tonny May 17 '18 at 14:02
  • @tonny, agreed. I'm in the suburbs. The 2.4ghz spectrum is almost useless here. I have 86 2.4ghz networks in range of my ap's. We had to move to 5.8ghz a while ago. I couldn't really set up a corporate/Enterprise wireless network in 2.4 without getting annoying call backs. Even using a spectrum analyzer, you never know who is going to install an AP on your channels next week. DFS & 802.11h also helps – Tim_Stewart May 17 '18 at 14:14
  • Hello guys, thank you all for the interest. I could make this work with a simple functionality I found out in ROUTER B, making him a simple Access Point (Which I guess is what you're calling a bridge mode). That funtionality creates a L2TP tunnel with Router A, and was only possible when I defined ROUTER B with an IP that is not on the DHCP pool defined for unique users in ROUTER A. Thank you all for the patience! – Minish May 17 '18 at 19:13
  • Now I have only the Belkin (ROUTER B) wirelless networks available as I originally wanted, and the port forwarding done in the Technicolor one (ROUTER A) works. Problem solved :) – Minish May 17 '18 at 19:18