Two wireless routers on one internet signal?

Question

theres been similar questions posted buts mines a little different and im not great w/ computers.

anyways, there are two neighboring houses involved. one has a satellite connection which feeds into a d-link router. the router is connected to a vonage phone and wirelessly supplies two computers.

out of one of the outputs of the d-link is a cable connected to another d-link router in the other house. this router wirelessly supplies 3 laptops.

the first day we hooked this system up everything worked right away, both houses got simultaneous wireless in all computers.

nothing was changed in the system but the next daythe laptops in the first house can only get wireless if the second router is disconnected from the first.

when the routers are both connected the laptops in the first house recieve a signal from the router but are unable to load webpages/msn messenger.

i dont know what went wrong after the first day but nothing changed phsyically, any ideas?

Answer 1

Ok, so if i read correctly you have 2 identical wireless routers running in proximity to each other.  

We will call the main router the one that is directly attached to your satellite modem router A.  The other router will be the router B.

1. Log into the interface in router A.  Take a look through the settings a bit to familiarize yourself with it.  See if you can find the DHCP range.  This is a range of addresses that the router gives to connected computers (connected via wires or wirelessly).  Take note of the range, it should be something like 192.168.1.50 - 192.168.1.100 (but it could vary).  Also find out what its IP address is.  This will be the address you used to log into the router interface.  In my example it might be 192.168.1.1.

2. In router A check the wireless settings.  Does it have a SSID that identifies it as Router A?  You'll want it to be something indicative of which signal it actually is, that way when you connect your laptop you know you're connecting to the router in the correct house.

3. Log into Router B.  Here you want to be sure that its WAN connection (or the connect to router A) is static.  This will eliminate confusion.  Select an IP address that is NOT in the DHCP range you found in step one.  Keeping with the example a good choice might be 192.168.1.10.  Make the subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and make the gateway the IP of router A that you found in step one.

4. In Router B make sure the wireless settings identify it properly as we did in step 2.

Answer 2

Yes.  you need to determine which is going to be the primary access to the internet, and which would be secondary.  Set the secondary unit up as an AP unit that would talk to the primary unit.  The primary unit would then share the ports to the other units that are connected though the AP or Access Point.  

Hope this helps.