Converting an old router into a switch

[Yes]

Yeah I know I'm not truly turning the router into a switch, I'm just disabling the features that would interfere with the other router, like DHCP.

Anyway, success! I ran /etc/rc.d/network restart after connecting the router to my computer and then I was able to access it at 192.168.1.1. I disabled DHCP, now lets see if it works...

[lz1dsb]

Frankly I didn't really get it. Linksys BEFSR41 has a built in switch. So this should work out of the box, even without configuring anything. According to the product description you even have an uplink port to connect to other such "switches". Why running DHCP is such a problem? A switch could be running a simple DHCP service and still operating on Layer 2. And if all hosts in your network are using static IP addresses, the DHCP won't matter anyway.

Cheers,
Boyan

[98cwitr]

Frankly I didn't really get it. Linksys BEFSR41 has a built in switch. So this should work out of the box, even without configuring anything. According to the product description you even have an uplink port to connect to other such "switches". Why running DHCP is such a problem? A switch could be running a simple DHCP service and still operating on Layer 2. And if all hosts in your network are using static IP addresses, the DHCP won't matter anyway.

Cheers,
Boyan

You dont want to have DHCP running on two connected devices...when the tables try to update they will conflict (for the clients, Im not talking about for the Ip assignment of the network device itself). Same goes for DNS.

It'll work...but it will get very very very slow very fast.

[Yes]

I don't understand much of the networking stuff, and it makes sense that a router would be able to act as a switch by default but it didn't when I tried it at first. I disabled DHCP and set it to act as a gateway rather than a router and now everything is working! Thank you so much, all of you

[98cwitr]

I don't understand much of the networking stuff, and it makes sense that a router would be able to act as a switch by default but it didn't when I tried it at first. I disabled DHCP and set it to act as a gateway rather than a router and now everything is working! Thank you so much, all of you

you dont have the router plugged into the WAN port do you? If you do, unplug it and put it in another port.

[Yes]

you dont have the router plugged into the WAN port do you? If you do, unplug it and put it in another port.

Nope, it's in one of the normal 1-4 ports.

[lz1dsb]

You dont want to have DHCP running on two connected devices...when the tables try to update they will conflict (for the clients, Im not talking about for the Ip assignment of the network device itself). Same goes for DNS.

It'll work...but it will get very very very slow very fast.

I didn't really understand what do you mean. Are you saying that having a DHCP service will slow down the network? What I was saying is that if he has his ip configs statically configured on all hosts, whether you have DHCP enabled or not, it doesn't really matter. DHCP only responds to queries, so if you don't send any, there won't be a response from the DHCP server. Well anyway, we're for sure quite out of the topic... The important point here is, that the problem is solved!

Cheers,
Boyan

[98cwitr]

I didn't really understand what do you mean. Are you saying that having a DHCP service will slow down the network? What I was saying is that if he has his ip configs statically configured on all hosts, whether you have DHCP enabled or not, it doesn't really matter. DHCP only responds to queries, so if you don't send any, there won't be a response from the DHCP server. Well anyway, we're for sure quite out of the topic... The important point here is, that the problem is solved!

Cheers,
Boyan

yeah, and when two routers continuously query each other you're going to have a slow network...you dont want to have two DHCP servers conflicting with each other.

Nope, it's in one of the normal 1-4 ports.

good call, you're fine then.