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Please give me advice or comments regarding the following situation:

  • I have a home office network consisting of a desktop computer, network printer, and a nas. One wireless router is installed at this location.

  • My cable modem is located at a different position. A wired connection between the cable modem and the wireless router is not possible. I'd like to connect to the modem via the wireless network.

I'm a bit confused on the hardware I need to do this.

Is it correct that a repeater/range extender (e.g. TL-WA830RE from TP-Link) can be used for this task (i.e. adding a wired network device to an existing wireless network)?

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Do you have coaxle cable connections in each of the rooms where the modem and office are located? – mikemackintosh Jun 11 at 23:32
This sounds more like a home network question and the product you mention is a consumer device. This is actually out of the scope of this site, you may get better results posting to SuperUser. – YLearn♦ Jun 12 at 0:51

closed as off topic by Adam Loveless, YLearn♦, John Jensen, generalnetworkerror, javano Jun 12 at 10:54

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2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

This will not work because your ISP most likely assigns you a single IP address from DHCP, which is why you need to connect the cable modem to a single routed port and not a shared environment, such as a wireless network.

However, as a possible alternative, powerline networking might work for this situation. You install one adapter by the modem, and another adapter at the wireless router.

What I have done before in similar situations where I can't have the modem connect directly to the rest of the wired network is connect the wireless router directly to the modem like normal, then use a second wireless router running DD-WRT as a wireless bridge. By doing this, you can have wired devices in both locations, but the link between the routers is wireless.

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up vote 0 down vote

The problem you have with the solution you are proposing is that your modem will be on the inside of your wireless router/gateway device. This will generally not produce the results you would typically want.

You would need something to get a wired connection to your router's WAN port. You could use an AP in bridge mode, or some other medium (such as power line connections or PLC).

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Please don't take this the wrong way, no disrespect is intended, but isn't this essentially the same answer that I already gave? – WaxTrax Jun 12 at 0:56
@WaxTrax, been busy so I quickly skimmed your answer, and re-reading it now, I can see how they are very similar (and in many ways yours is better). However, I feel mine still fits as it states the main problem a little more clearly since the OP seems to have less network knowledge than most of our users. – YLearn♦ Jun 12 at 1:01

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