Multiple Wi-Fi Routers

When I moved back to Toronto in 2003, the first thing I did was to set up a wireless network at home. It was out of necessity: the house is too big; we have too many computers; it would be an ugly mess to pull wires across hallways and down the stairs. Wi-Fi was the perfect solution.

Since then, more devices have been added to the network without any problems. That was until the arrival of the Nintendo Wii. It appears that when the Wii has been in use for a while, it takes over the wireless router, and will not allow any new device to join the network, at which point the only solution is to reboot the wireless router. This, to me, is unacceptable.

A quick search on-line shows that other people are having similar problems, and Nintendo has not provided a fix. I could get a new wireless router and hope that it can handle the Wii, but I then remembered that I had a spare wireless router sitting in storage doing nothing. It was replaced a couple of years back by a more powerful one, but there is nothing wrong with it otherwise. I could make this second Wi-Fi router a dedicated one for the Wii. This way, the Wii's bully behaviour will not affect the other devices.

Our house, like most homes, has one high-speed service. How do I create two (or more) wireless networks? I looked around on-line, but couldn't find any useful help. So I closed my eyes and thought about it. Well, it really isn't that complicated. Here's what I did:



Using the same daisy-chain setup, one can easily insert a third wireless router, a fourth, etc. The only constraint is that all the routers must be within close proximity to each other.

In theory, this new setup should fix the problem caused by the Nintendo Wii.

One last note of interest is I need to connect a computer to each wireless router to configure it. There are a number of ways to establish the connection. In the above diagram, I already have a device connected to Router #1 via an Ethernet cable, so I used that device to configure the router. For Router #2, I took an Ethernet cable, plugged one end into one of the router's LAN ports, and the other end into my laptop, and configured the router using the laptop. Alternately, as I know the default factory-set Wi-Fi SSID of Router #2, I can also connect my laptop wirelessly to Router #2. Once a connection to the router is established, I can configure the router from the web browser of the device, and set up the usual functions (e.g. SSID, encryption methods, firewall, passwords, etc.).