ADSL router problemsFollow

What brand ADSL router modem do you have? Do you have access to it? Or do you just have Ethernet ports wired to your apartment and the building maintenance crew has a modem somewhere in their control?

I'm thinking right now that you just need a simple switch or a basic router setup to be a switch to allow two devices to share the one Ethernet port labelled "3" in your livingroom. I'm assuming that if you plug into 3, someone else can plug into 4, or even 1 or 2, and be connected?

Edit:
Looking through the manual I cannot tell right away if it can be used as a router only.
http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/DGN2200M/DGN2200M_UM_04Nov11.pdf

Edited, Mar 10th 2013 9:45am by TirithRR

Edited, Mar 10th 2013 4:58pm by TirithRR

Who is providing your Internet? How can you have DSL service without a phone jack....?

Sounds like you just need a basic switch, not a modem, and it also sounds like some of the jacks in your apartment may not even be hot.

That router does indeed have a DSL modem built into it, but it's going to be completely useless to you without a DSL internet service provider and a phone jack. Almost all appartments within the borders of the united states will have a phone jack somewhere on their premisis. It's usually going to be either in the kitchen in a silver rectangular plate in a wall, or along an exterior wall baseboard, usually a little white or tan surface mount box with a jack on the side, sometimes an actual wall plate in newer construction.. Possibly near wherever your coaxial cable comes in through the wall. If you live in a town with a population greater than 3 people I almost garuntee its there somewhere.

That aside, it sounds like you have a local built in network in your appartment already anyways, RTK-A is probably short for Residential Transmission, block A, and since plugging a laptop into it via a jumper provides internet, its probably a live network feed from the appartment main office. What you need in that case is going to be a 5 port ethernet switch and 5 network wires. One from RTK-A to the switch, and then 1 from the switch to each of the 1-4 network ports. If this is a residential network, adding anohter router downstream is going to complicate things and probably won't work unless you go into the router firmware and essentially turn off all the routing bits. You might also check with your appartment management office and see if they provide residential internet, and if so, maybe they have someone locally that can help you set it up. Or take a picture of it and post it here and we might be able to figure it out.


edit: you probably need one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=33-122-128&ParentOnly=1

Edited, Mar 10th 2013 11:57am by Kaolian

nope, no router. switch only in that particular case.

Oh. in that case you're going to want a wireless access point. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0FU0FG9883 that particular one has 4 wired ports built in which won't be enough to light up all the physical ports so you may want the physical switch in addition.

The main thing to take away from that is if there is already a router somewhere in the appartment complex upstream of you, which from your descriptionh so far is the case, you don't want a second router behind it unless you know how to configure that second router to basically only act as an access point and not as a security device, otherwise you are going to not get any of your network traffic because the two routers will basically fight over port security protocals.

When you registered, did you have to give them the MAC Address of the device you wanted to connect with?

There was a similar setup in my dormitory in college. The entire building was wired with Ethernet. We had to give them the MAC Address of the device we wanted to connect, and there was only one allowed per registration. If we wanted to connect with multiple devices we had to setup a router and spoof the MAC Address of the device we registered and setup a small local network within their network.

I guess the easiest way to tell if you don't know right off hand... can you connect any computer and laptop to this port and it will work, or is it only the one you own that works?

Nope, just my adress.


Yes, I can connect any device into this and it will work.