Last night I had 4 guys over for a LAN-party (for gaming). A couple people had routers, but only 4 ports, so we tried to link two routers together. For some reason, the second router was not picking up the game (i.e. not talking with he "host" router, but each computer on the second router was talking to each other). WHy did this happen? How do I set up two routers to be able to communication with each other and be able to play a LAN game?

Thanks for the help.

How did you connect the two routers?

The simple way to do this would be to turn off DHCP on one of the routers, then connect them with an ethernet cable (possibly a crossover cable, depending on the routers' autosensing capabilities) in the LAN ports (not the WAN ports).

At first we ran three computers (and a wireless router) directly from a hub, then we tried to connected the other two guys to the router. Basically, the people on the hub could see each other and the people on the router could see each other, but no one on the router could see anyone on the hub. We actually didn't try to connect from one router to the next. We did not turn the DHCP off of the second router.

If you turn off the DHCP how are the computers on the second router going to get an IP address?

If you turn off DHCP on one of the routers, it basically becomes a switch (akin to a hub). Computers connected to it will get their addresses from the DHCP server on the other router.

Thanks! I'll try that. Aother question though...If instead we were running a router out of a hub, would we still need to turn off DHCP?

The reason to turn on DHCP on one of the routers is so that you only have one DHCP server on your network. When you have two routers connected together, they constitute one network. If they are both giving out DHCP addresses, computers connected to one router can potentially get addresses that are not compatible with addresses gotten by computers connected to the other router, even though they are all physically connected. By turning off one of the DHCP servers, you ensure that any computer connected to either router will get an address compatible with any other computer on the network.

Since a hub does not have a DHCP server, you get the same effect when you use it with a router. One router + one hub = only one DHCP server on the network. If you turned off DHCP on the router in this setup you would have no DHCP servers on your network. So no, you do not need to turn off DHCP in this case.