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Summary: Adding a wireless access point can be a little frustrating if you're behind a router and the access point is also trying to be a router. How do I get my wireless access point to work with my existing router? This is the scenario: you have an existing cable, satellite, or DSL connection to the internet that is connected to a broadband router or PC providing Internet Connection Sharing that in turn connects to your ethernet local area network. You want to add a wireless access point. Sounds easy, and it is. However there is a gotcha, and the name of the gotcha is NAT - Network Address Translation. • The short answer is to make sure the wireless access point is not also attempting to provide NAT. How you do that will vary based on the access point, so check your documentation for NAT or for providing DHCP services to wireless clients and turn that off. NAT is a technique that lets multiple machines on one side of your router share a single internet connection, and most importantly a single internet IP address as well. The router does this by handing out local IP addresses to each machine on your local network and translating between those addresses and the "real" internet IP address when the local computers access the internet. Many wireless access points can be also configured to act very much like a broadband router. In fact there are several combo devices that are both a broadband router and wireless access point in one package. In either case, they may also be able to provide NAT functionality between the wireless and wired networks. If NAT is turned on at both the broadband router and the wireless access point, all wireless devices are going through two levels of NAT to access the internet. Not only is that adding unnecessary overhead, but it also introduces some real problems. NAT "protects" the "local" devices from the remote devices ... in this case, the wireless access point will "protect" the wireless machines from the rest of your local network. In effect, it'll make them inaccessible. So as I said earlier, the solution is fairly simple. You only need one level of NAT between the internet and the rest of your LAN. Anything on your local network is safe and does not need additional NAT. Make sure that NAT or DHCP is turned OFF on the wireless access point. (To be clear, the wireless access point may still use DHCP to get an address for itself, but it should not provide DHCP functionality to wireless devices.) Related:
• Recent Comments
HI, I have a patch conntected to Access Point(192.168.0.50) and the AP is Put as AP Clients then the AP is connected to a SMC router(192.168.2.1) via WAN Port so i can't access to the AP from a PC connected to the router PLZ help me Posted by: AHMA at May 14, 2007 11:29 PMi have a dsl connection on for my computer, do i have to purchase a router to use my wireless connection or is my dsl modem all i need? Posted by: Andre at June 20, 2007 07:56 PM-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Unless your DSL modem has wireless capability, then yes, you'll most likely Leo -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iD8DBQFGezzWCMEe9B/8oqERAo+8AJ9cGb3W0HKI0c4gQCkqoZGQ22X39gCcDeUk hi wen i connect my pc to my router its says connected but cant get on net so i press repair connection and come up renewing my netwrd address when it dos that i still cant get on net drivin me mad Posted by: patrick flanagan at June 23, 2007 11:53 AMhow to connect my wireless router to free hotspot? Posted by: Real G at September 17, 2007 07:23 PMI am trying something a little different and YES I have turned OFF NAT and DHCP as you suggested in the article but no help with this problem, Hi, I don't understand this. Lol I'm not too good with this stuff. I have a wired router. I bough a D-link G-122 usb wireless adapter. Trying to figure out how to connect that and make a wireless access point so I can play my psp with online players. I hope this makes sense. If you know anything about this please help me. Thanks so much! Posted by: Tresela at February 1, 2008 10:39 AMThis is an excellent article about DSL. However, I have comcast modem-router all in one. is it better to use that or buy a separate router to be able to connect an internet DVR with 4 cameras? Post a comment on "How do I get my wireless access point to work with my existing router?":
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