How to use a router as a switch: If the four ports of your SOHO router arent enough to provide your hosts

in your LAN than one way to get around this is to use an old router with an integrated switch. Most SOHO routers today have a switch controller on board, usually a Layer-2 switch that works with MAC-Addresses. If there is an old router at your home than you can use this a switch alternative and you dont need to buy an extra switch for this. Steps: Router for internet access = A Router as switch = B 1) Connect router B with the power cable and plug a twisted pair cable from one PC into one of the LAN ports of the router. Connect to the router with its IP and reset the router to its default settings. 2) Deactivate the DHCP server on the router and change the IP subnet to the subnet your router A uses (the one that you use for WAN access). Usually most routers as default use Class C Addresses such as 192.168.x.x. So for example if router A has 192.168.10.1 as its private IP you change the IP of your router B to 192.168.10.2 Make sure, if you have an DHCP server running on router A that the IP of your router B is outside the DHCP range (Standard for DHCP default settings on most routers is .100-.199. 3) After this, save the settings and connect the router B with your router A via a LAN port using a twisted pair cable. Dont use the WAN port for this. 4) You can now plug hosts (PCs) of your LAN into the LAN ports of router B which is connected to router A. 5) Restart your PCs. Now the PCs should get the IPs from DHCP server on router A. 6) If you want to use static IPs, disable the DHCP server on router A and assign IPs to every Hosts / PCs in your LAN. They all need to be in the same subnet as router A. Note that router B does not have any routing abilities now and is not working

on Layer 3. Its a switch now working on Layer 2. The WAN ports on router B is not used at all since its connected just for its switching function. For all hosts conencted to router B also type in the DNS server addresses and the gateway addresses, which should be the address of router A. The DNS address is either the IP of router A (private IP) or an alternative IP. (8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4 )