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March 26th, 2005 14:00
what is the difference between a Router and an Access Point
Dear Friends,
I work as a technician at a High School. I would like to plug in some
wireless equipment, but I've noticed that introducing a wireless "router"
causes problems. In a classroom of stations, for example, some of the student
computers start getting IP addresses from the Linksys router (192.168...) instead of the properly subnetted addresses that come from the school's network.
I was thinking that a Linksys Wireless Access Point (not a router) would
serve better, but I'm not sure what the difference is.
I presume that the AP doesn't issue IP addresses... it makes the DHCP
requests to the network and, therefore, gets IPs consistent with the subnet.
Is that the difference between an AP and a Router?
thanks in advance,
I work as a technician at a High School. I would like to plug in some
wireless equipment, but I've noticed that introducing a wireless "router"
causes problems. In a classroom of stations, for example, some of the student
computers start getting IP addresses from the Linksys router (192.168...) instead of the properly subnetted addresses that come from the school's network.
I was thinking that a Linksys Wireless Access Point (not a router) would
serve better, but I'm not sure what the difference is.
I presume that the AP doesn't issue IP addresses... it makes the DHCP
requests to the network and, therefore, gets IPs consistent with the subnet.
Is that the difference between an AP and a Router?
thanks in advance,
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volcano11
2 Intern
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28K Posts
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March 26th, 2005 15:00
A router forms an interface between the internet, usually a cable or dsl modem and the other computers that connect to it. It assigns private IP addresses and routes internet traffic to the appropriate computers. Since you are connecting to the school's network that already has a dhcp server (i.e. it assigns IP addresses), the device you need is not a router. An access point is a device that connects computers by wireless into an existing network without assigning IP addresses. This is the device you need for your situation. Note that you should be able to configure your Linksys router to run in Access Point mode rather than Router mode. Even though access points have less functionality than routers, access point are more expensive than routers, so I recommend just putting the router into access point mode. See the documentation that came wtih the router to see how to do this. It involves disabling the dhcp server on the router and manually assigning the router an IP address within the existing range on your school's network.
Steve