Use Two Separate Wireless Routers?

[Kaos Kid]

I currently have a WRT54GL router serving my PCs throughout the house that I have been very happy with over the last few years. I have 4 wireless adapters using it, 2 Linksys G USB adapters and 2 Rosewill N USB adapters. I have Charter Cable and on the wireless devices show download speeds of between 16-20Mbps on all adapters, however the PC that is wired in to the router actually gets the full bandwidth that Charter is providing me (latest test showed 38Mbps on their local server!).

I have been jonesing for an N router that would work with both the G adapters and the N adapters but allow me to take advantage of the full bandwidth possible from the N adapters. Let me say that the N adapters are connected to my personal Living Room surfer and to my Living Room HTPC for easy bittorrent and streaming of web content, and the G adapters are connected to my kids' bedroom PCs. The speeds that the G adapters natively get are fine for their surfing and kids web-based gaming (Nickelodeon, Disney, etc.) but I would like to get the faster N speeds on my two Living Room boxes. Would it be feasible to find a cheap N router to only use for the N adapters and yet continue to use the WRT54GL for the kids' connections? IF it would be my most cost-effective route (you know me, CHEAP, lol) what should I look for? Would I be hooking the N router to my modem and then hard wire the GL to an ethernet port, or try to set up the GL as a repeater (either hard-wired or wireless, I dunno) for the kids boxes? How would the IP addresses be assigned? Currently my GL automatically assigns IP addys to all the boxes in the 192.168.1.2 >>> 192.168.1.7 ranges, but I am clueless about how using multiple routers would achieve my end goal of faster download speeds on the N adapters while still remaining compatible with the kids' G adapters. Thanks for any advice!

[Major_A]

Didn't you say that you are running Tomato or DD-WRT? I think both of those firmwares allow you to run an separate router as an extender. Or even something similar to this Newegg link.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833139024

[Kaos Kid]

No I never ended up flashing to the open source stuff ( I seem to remember warnings from someone about bricking it so I got cold feet), I'm still using the latest from Cisco in that router...but if that will help in conjunction with an N router I may have to revisit the idea. The reason I started this thread is that I've been looking at the customer reviews on Newegg about the lower-priced N routers and most of them in the sub $40 range had some reported problems. I was thinking that perhaps if I only had two connections on the N router then maybe I wouldn't be taxing the router as much and since I don't really want to buy new N adapters just for the kids to surf with I could get by with keeping them on the G router.

The device you provided a link to is a wi-fi adapter, I don't see how that will increase speeds from a G router to N specs, I already have two N-adapters that I would like to get full benefit from by having an N router. What I was looking for was a cheap router that would work fine for my 4 adapters (2 Ns and 2 Gs) and run the maximum specified speeds that each adapter is capable of, and if failing in that find a cheap N router that would run the 2 N adapters at their maximum speeds while using the G router as a repeater or extender (not sure which term I should be using here) that would have just the G adapters on line. Basically I want the N WiFi adapters to get the full 38Mbps that Charter is giving me (I get that speed from wired connection to the G router, but not from WiFi connection to the G router, even with N-rated adapters), instead of the 20Mbps that they are bottlenecked at now due to the G routers' wireless limitations.

[Major_A]

You don't have to have an N adapter to connect to an N router. The only thing is the adapters will be limited to their maximum speed (G = 54 Mbps). The adapter I linked to was to show you an option on how to hook up your old router. Say your TV, console, Blu-Ray player, satellite box all have a wired ethernet port. Use the old router to get a signal from the new one, and split the wired connections. And you'll tax the wireless adapters way before you ever tax the router. Getting better adapters make a lot of difference, especially going from USB to something faster (i.e. PCIe, hell even PCI).

As usual I'd wait to see what what the resident network guru (kenc51) has to say.

[egloeckle]

Unless you are massively re-configuring your old router to work only as an access point (no DHCP, no NAT, etc), do yourself a favor and dont use it if you get a new N router. Troubleshooting issues that are caused by double NAT is a nightmare.

If you really want to use the G router you can flash the firmware and use it as an extender or bridge but remember that anything connected to that will only run at G (54mbps) speeds.

[Kaos Kid]

I've got my eye on this one: BELKIN E9K6000. I couldn't find any decent reviews of it on the net but at least the few customer feedbacks that were on Newegg cast it in a positive light.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833314082

I was looking at a Rosewill single band that was half the price after sale and promo code (cheaping out at $30), but I'm thinking this Belkin with dual band (2.4Ghz & 5Ghz) and USB ports for an external drive or a printer would be a better investment for the next couple of years for $65 shipped. I can't get one of the fancy cutting edge ones but this Belkin seems to be a good compromise between price and features for my limited needs.

Whatcha think?