I have a friend in Thailand who's looking for some advice. He owns a condo in town and has broadband supplied into his room. The presentation is a length of Cat5 with an RJ45 plug on the end of it. He has no access to the router at the other end of this cable. He's also not very good with computers and relies on my annual visit to sort his problems out

He's bought the condo next door and had it tarted up but has kept it as a separate condo. He obviously has the option of having a new broadband installation into this room but doesn't really want to pay another monthly fee when the room will only be used on a part time basis.

What options does he have please? As I said he has no control over the configuration of the router that supplies his BB. All ideas gratefully received.

Get a router; cheap enough and would only need to be connected to the main feed. It's probably not 'legal' in that his renting (?) contract may not allow it, but spoof the guy's computer's MAC and it should be good to go.

I'm just wondering whether two routers in series might cause configuration problems?

I'm just wondering whether two routers in series might cause configuration problems?

Shouldn't cause any at all.

So if he stuck a wifi router on he wouldn't even need to drill a hole through the wall?

So if he stuck a wifi router on he wouldn't even need to drill a hole through the wall?

Depending on attunation of signal by walls/power lines then technically yes.

If you go that route try it with a "N" router, even if the computers attached aren't "N" capable the signal is much stronger....but try it before you buy it (if possible).

I can get my hands on a cheap Dlink with 'N' and DD-WRT. I assume that his kit uses DHCP. (I've just emailed him to find out). What would I need to do if that's the case? Just make sure that the LAN side of the router was running on a different subnet than the WAN side?

I can get my hands on a cheap Dlink with 'N' and DD-WRT. I assume that his kit uses DHCP. (I've just emailed him to find out). What would I need to do if that's the case? Just make sure that the LAN side of the router was running on a different subnet than the WAN side?

I love dd-wrt...I don't think you'll need to set up a seperate subnet mask but it's been a while since I've messed around with that stuff.

If the feed into the WAN side of the router is on one subnet surely I'll need a different subnet on the LAN side otherwise it wouldn't be a router and wouldn't be able to handle 2 separate machines at the same time?

Setup the subnet first, make sure to turn off DNS in that router.

Check the Linksys website for very detailed explanation of how to set up network with two routers. They will be talking about Linksys routers but the same steps apply to almost every consumer-level unti.

Not sure if this is possible here:

Years ago when I got ADSL from TRUE their router software was set to allow only two PCs connected at the same time though the router had four LAN sockets. I used a cross-over LAN cable to connect to a LAN switch and could now use up to eight PCs on cable.

Setup the subnet first, make sure to turn off DNS in that router.

Check the Linksys website for very detailed explanation of how to set up network with two routers. They will be talking about Linksys routers but the same steps apply to almost every consumer-level unti.

Thanks for that. The Linksys site is very useful.