Right, my trusty DG834 is playing up (the wireless bit doesn't sustain a connection for more than a few minutes, very annoying when trying to download a PS3 update). I have acquired one of these. It is router only with no modem.

I'm just wondering about setting it up. I assume I disable wireless on the current router and set the new one up and reserve both IP addresses. Which one should do the DHCP, the original router or the new one? Or does it not really matter? I suspect that as it's a consumer unit, it will all work automagically and I'm probably worrying over nothing.

The trick I find is to break the problem into parts so that you can identify the problem. Try using the Ethernet connection first then try the wireless.


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The simplest thing is to use the new device purely as a wireless access point. The original router will continue to do the DHCP and the routing as well as being the ADSL modem.

Leave the yellow WAN port on the new router disconnected and instead join it to the Netgear using one of the four LAN ports. If you use the WAN port, then the wired network on the Netgear will not be able to talk to the wireless network.

Disable DHCP on the new router and disable wireless on the old router

Give the new router a static IP address that's in the same range as the Netgear, but out of the way. For example if the Netgear is 192.168.1.1 then you might choose 192.168.1.200 for the new router, and the gateway and should be 192.168.1.1 and the subnet 255.255.255.0

There may be other settings, but on most home routers the wireless and 4 port switch talk to each other seamlessly so the wireless will talk to the Netgear.

Neat looking box by the way. Good luck!

Cheers jj, that's great. Good thinking about the wan port, hadn't thought of that and i should have realised as when I did something similar for my parents, I ended up having two networks, the wan was the LAN of the modem. It worked, but seemed unnecessarily complicated.

Unfortunately it's got a European plug, so will have to wait until I get an adaptor tomorrow.

It looks really cool, wish I had an internet connection faster than 1mb to make use of it.

I like the thought of storing media on the hard drive and streaming it to my ps3 though.

Out of interest, is there a way to set up the router as a "straight through modem" so I could use the wan port? Given your solution, I won't bother, but would be interesting to know. Glancing through the GUI, it doesn't seem obvious, which is why I asked the original question.

Yes, kind of. That's the alternative setup. Let the new box do everything and the Netgear just be the modem and bridge to the new router. Any wired devices will have to plug into the new box because the Netgear will no longer route to them properly.

On the Netgear, disable the wireless.

Then on the Netgear, under "Basic Settings" the last option is for the NAT. You should turn this off. That way, your public IP address should go through to the new router.

Now connect the yellow WAN port on the new box to the Netgear. It should pick up the internet, and everything else now runs off that.

I've not actually tried using a Netgear like this, but it should work just fine I think. What I'm not 100% sure of is whether the DHCP on the Netgear will correctly send the public IP to the new router, but I think it should. If it all works then it's probably the better solution.

I'm tempted to try it, because it seems the "proper" solution. Plus it gives me four gigabit Ethernet ports as opposed to three. Although everything is wireless as the phone point is in the dining room.

At leat both should work. Thanks for that. I can't believe I forgot about NAT. Since everything's become all automagic, I seem to have forgotten all the network stuff I used to know!

For a home setup there's probably no real need, you can plug the WAN port of the new router into LAN on the Netgear and as long as the internal IP range doesn't overlap the 192.168.x.x on the Netgear you won't run into any conflict (I've done the same in extreme circumstances for enterprise deployments although I wasn't proud of myself).

Both routers can run DHCP; just turn off wifi on the NG, plug your stuff into the new router and Bob is your uncle. It's double NAT that way but unless you're running an FTPS server or tunnel mode VPN services, which would be odd, you should be just fine.

But if it's easy to put the NG into bridged mode then that's still better.

Being the sky variant of the router, it doesn't have any options for nat or anything else, so I just did the wan into LAN thing and it seems to work fine as suggested.