Turn your Wifi Router into a Switch Hub function

This blog will guide you on how you can turn your router into a switch hub. This is very applicable if you have to extend your wifi signal in your network. Although you can extend your wifi signal without turning your wifi router into switch hub. But this is not recommended because it will cause your bandwidth to become lesser. So this method is very much recommended for those who have a less bandwidth or internet speed network. 

Here are the Steps on How you can turn your wifi router into a switch hub function.

1. Access Your Router

 You can access your wifi router using your web browser. Just type in the URL its IP address with username and password. See example bellow a linksys wifi router with an IP address of 192.168.8.1. All linksys router or any wifi router brands have a default IP address. You will have to change its IP address corresponds to the network you want it to connect. So if my router is 192.168.8.1 and I want it to become a switch on a network router 192.168.0.1, I will have to change its IP address for that network. So I will assign this wifi router IP address with 192.168.0.254. If your network router serves as a dhcp server then you will have to assign an IP address for your switch router that is out or beyond the IP ranges specific on the network router.

2. Go to Basic Settings of Your Wifi Router

We will have to change the IP address of the router corresponds to the network we want it to connect.

If we don't change its IP address then we cannot connect to the network. So in this example, I am going to connect to a router with an IP address of 192.168.0.1. I will have to change the IP to 192.168.0.254. Let's say if the wifi router is a DHCP server with IP ranges from 192.168.0.2 - 50, then you will have to assign your router switch an IP between 192.168.0.51-254 to be safe. This is to avoid conflict with IP address in your network.

Configuartions :

Internet Connection Type - It depends on your main router. But for this example, it will be Automatic Configuration. This is because the main router is a DHCP server. So this router switch will acquire an IP address for its internet automatically if it is connect to the main router. If the main router has statically configured its IP address or its DCHP is disabled, then you will have to apply static configuration for your internet connection.

Router IP - 192.168.0.254 as our example.

DHCP Server - DISABLED . This is the trick if we are going to create a router with a switch hub function. 

Remember this, you will have to plug in the UTP cable from your main router not on the Internet port of your router switch, but on any LAN port of the router.

You can also use your wifi router switch to extend the wifi signal of your network. Just enable the SSID broadcast of your wifi router. Specify its wifi name and secure it with a password.

That's it. You will now have a wifi router configured as a switch hub. Thanks for reading my blog. I hope this one helps.