I am using a Linksys WRT54G wireless router to handle wired and wireless access to the HN7000s Satellite modem for DHCP services. Here's some background info and the steps I took to integrate the Wireless router into my network with the Hughesnet Satellite modem providing IP through DHCP.
I live out in the sticks with no access to broadband cable or DSL solutions. I recently made the move from dialup internet access to Hughesnet satellite internet access. Don’t laugh, it’s somewhat faster than dialup, I rarely get disconnected, and downloads are instantaneous compared to dialup. Antivirus updates take minutes, rather than hours. Uploads are taking about the same amount of time as dialup, but occasionally upload speeds are faster.
See the File Download screen shot at left. I was downloading the Linksys WRT54G router documentation from the Linksys website. This shows a 3.55MB download in 21 seconds. Not lightening fast, but that would have been about a 24-minute download with my dialup connection.
My home is wired with CAT-5. Yes, I networked our dialup connection. We access the internet primarily from our front room, but we also use the connection in the basement, and every now and then we would check the status of auctions from the bedrooms. I had the only wireless-enabled laptop, so it didn’t seem important for a wireless access solution. Recently, my wife bought a new laptop with integrated wireless. For some reason, it didn’t seem to work through the old 10MB hub I’d had setup in the front room for years. I had an extra 10/100 switch laying around that seemed to solve that problem, but it was noisy. We could hear it upstairs in the bedroom! I stuck the unit inside an end table cabinet, but it didn’t help much. The fan-noise issue set off an ebay search for something solid state, no fans. I searched for D-Link, LinkSys, and even Cisco switches.
Then, I remembered my brother had given me a wireless LinkSys router. I’d attempted to set it up at one point with my laptop, and I could see the router while plugged in with a CAT-5 cable, or via wireless on a different LAN segment (192.168.1.xxx,) but couldn’t get it integrated onto our Windows Internet Connection Sharing network. The primary reason was that Windows ICS serves up 192.168.0.xxx addresses, and the Wireless router served up 192.168.1.xxx. I didn’t realize at the time how to configure the router as an access point (or act as a switch, really) and to pass on DHCP requests from the Windows ICS server through the wireless router. So the router went on the shelf, where I looked at it everyday for about a year, and forgot I had it until the ebay searching jogged my memory.
I pulled the router off the shelf, dusted it off, and plugged it into our new satellite modem. Nothing. I could log into the router with a CAT-5 cable, but that’s it. I did some digging around on the Hughesnet knowledgebase, and figured out how to setup the router to work with the satellite modem/router. I’m pretty sure this system setup isn’t unique to the satellite modem/router, and will work with just about any router/modem serving up DHCP to your home network. So the following are the steps I took to enable wireless. A paragraph or two of explanation follows.
So here are the steps for a Hughesnet NAT with DHCP broadband satellite connection. See below for details:
My network configuration is considered NAT with DHCP. My satellite service didn’t include a static IP address. That’s not that important, unless I was hosting my own servers and webpages. There are ways around that, but I wasn’t interested and didn’t need static pages. So the NAT with DHCP configuration was fine. This means I will get whatever IP address Hughesnet assigns me on the internet side of my router, and the router will translate my home-network, internal IP addresses to whatever the Hughesnet IP address is for internet routing.
The Hughesnet HN7000s modem/router serves up internal IP via DHCP. You can’t have two DHCP servers, so whatever I hooked into it had to have DHCP disabled. The key step in this system was to disable the DHCP server in the wireless router. So that should be the first step. You’ll have to connect directly to the router, so get a CAT-5 cable and connect it to a port on the router and login to the router. My Google results indicated that after a reset, my LinkSys used no username and a password of Admin. You may have to look up your router’s instructions online, but essentially, the first setup window, once logged into the router, asks what the DHCP settings should be. Of course, I disabled DHCP server services. To make the wireless router a “pass-through device,” one that passes on the client (laptop) DHCP requests to the actual device serving up IP addresses, the Hughesnet satellite modem/router, you just make the wireless router a part of the local network with a static IP address, making it the last IP available in the satellite modem’s DHCP range: 192.168.0.254. I also set up the netmask to 255.255.255.0, and the default gateway, the Hughesnet modem/router, to 192.168.0.1 (your modem/router may be 192.168.1.xxx.) The final step is to connect the wireless router to the Hughesnet modem/router. The Hughesnet modem/router comes with a port for the internal network labeled LAN. Your wireless router should have a WAN port, but you should avoid that and connect the cable coming from the modem/router to one of the other available ports. Mine came with four switch ports. It’s important to not connect to the WAN port.
That’s it! I could connect to the internet immediately. But don’t think you are done, yet. You should do at least the cursory security configuration to make it look good. My brother uses wireless for his internal networking and lives ina densely populated neighborhood with an apartment nearby. He has nearly 20 wireless networks he can connect to without any problem. I understand that determined hackers can get access to your network, and there are some who claim you should leave your network open for anyone to use and just secure your internal PCs. I’m just not that trusting. Log into your wireless router now by going to 192.168.0.254 in your browser. The first thing you should do is change your router’s username and password. We only have two wireless clients, so I limited wireless access to the router by MAC address. That’s pretty simple to manage. I quit telling the world that I was using a wireless network by disabling the broadcasting of the network ID, SSID. I also enabled the router’s security protocol called WPA, which is supposedly better than the older, and weaker, encryption protocol, WEP. I was a little intimidated by this configuration at first, but I typed in my pets’ names as the encryption key, and configured it into both laptops’ wireless setup, and I was good to go. I guess if you can’t tell WPA is working, it’s configured properly. There are probably some other security measures I need to take, but I think this will keep my neighbors from leeching my limited-bandwidth satellite access.
So here are the steps for a Hughesnet NAT with DHCP broadband satellite connection. See below for details:
I hope this little commentary/guide was helpful to you. I'm not even sure it was necessary. Send me your questions, comments, roasts, and flames, and I will post them below. No comments on my poor efforts at security, I know my offerings are weak in this regard. If you have more information, such as how to disable the HN7000s DHCP server, that would be great. Any other tips, etc., are welcome. My email address is below.
So when I was doing research (that means I used Google) for integrating the wireless router into my network, I kept reading about a third-party, linux-based firmware for routers, such as the WRT54G, called DD-WRT. The alternative firmware replaces the factory firmware and allows you much more control over your router. While I was mainly concerned with the WRT54G compatibilty, many other routers accepted the DD-WRT firmware, as well. But, apparently you want to avoid v.5 WRT54G routers because of their limited RAM and other drawbacks. In fact, most websites on third-party firmwares said to buy the new WRT54GL. Wikipedia has exhaustive compatibility charts. Knock yourself out. And whole websites are dedicated to these alternative firmwares, so there is plenty of good reading for geeks interested in looking into an altenative firmware. I already had a v.3, so I went ahead and bought another v 3.0 WRT54G on Ebay just to play with. Since I started reading about DD-WRT, I downloaded that first. But before my new router arrived, I read about Tomato. DD-WRT is mired in open-source controversy about who did all of the work, who can sell the proprietary interface, who is taking credit for the project, etc. But no such controversy surrounded Tomato. In fact, everything I read indicated it was stable, reliable, and offered a simple, inutitive interface. So I downloaded Tomato, too.
My new router arrived today, and within about ten minutes, literally, I had the firmware flashed and a new router on the network.
This is what I did:
The last step was was to configure the Tomato router like I did up above for my network. Simple enough.
Lastly I took the rudimentary security steps I descibed above to keep my neighbors honest.
I was looking forward to playing with all of the router settings now available to me, but the damn firmware worked perfectly right out of the box, so I am not touching a thing. In fact, I don't know what 99% of the settings do. I found the DHCP and static IP setup stuff very quickly. It's an intuitive interface. I saw the transmit power setting, but left it at its default setting of 42. By now I'd set up tomato router in the basement, and as I sat in my front room with a signal strength of "excellent," why crank it up for nothing? I may even try turning the transmit power down a bit because I've figured out I seem to have no performance issues with signal strength of "good." I think that's more interesting than cranking it up. We'll see.
OK. So I have this new router and it has this alternative firmware with a thousand different settings and it works great and everything, but...That's it. It's not very thrilling. It took ten minutes to flash it and get it up and running, and about an hour to jack around with some of the basic settings. It works and I'm done jacking around with it. I think I would like to try taking the second router and using it as, um, an extender? Is that the terminology? In other words, both of my routers are plugged into the network, but what if I wanted one to sit on the roof or something? Would I have to run a cable up to it? So there has to be some way to configure the two routers so that the original router still passes on DHCP services from the Hughsenet modem, and I could connect to the network, or at least the internet, through the new router without it being hooked up to the network with a cable. Does that make sense? I'll figure out if that's possible next. Unless you know how to do it. Tell me. WDS or something? I'd still like security. What's that called?
