IP Address Conflicts with 2 wireless routers

[Hymavath]

Hello everyone. I have a bit complex setup of wireless networks at home. I use 2 wireless routers to share the internet connection between 3 computers and 2 laptops. The internet i use is adsl of mtnl. The phone outlet is in the hall room where my first wireless router is connected. The wireless signal is pretty good on the desktop computer on which i have a custom antenna installed for the wireless card. But the other computers and the 2 laptops couldn't catch the signals that well. So i have connected the other wireless router to the ethernet of the desktop and i have bridged connections to share internet among the other computers. So now this setup works gr8. I sometimes get IP Address Conflicts with 2 wireless routers on my desktop and one laptop. Does it not work this way? am i doing something wrong? It works sometimes and sometimes it doesn't. i have to start the computers and laptops all together. It is a small home office. What needs to be done to avoid the random ip conflict errors?

[Connect_Me]

Instead of bridging the connections, check if the other router can work as access point. There are many router available in the market which can act as an access point. If you dont have this feature, only then continue with this setup. Also check if the routers have the latest firware. This might also be a problem. Do you have dhcp enabled on both router or on only one router, or none? If the IP addresses are static, then Conflicts shouldn't occur. Also check if the two routers belong to different networks, else this problem is likely to occur most of the time. Do check the access point feature first.

[Sabastiaan]

Yeah, firstly try upgrading your router's firmwares. Older router had this bug when two routers were bridged together. Well i suggest you dont use dynamic ip on bothe routers, only use it on one router. That is turn off dhcp on anyone router. The best option would be to turn of dhcp on the secon router and let it obtain the ip from the first router, you won't have this problem then. As most of the routers have a common network address, there might be a possibility that the same network addresses are causing the conflicts. Also try this method : Turn on wireless network on your computers and laptops one by one. See if this eliminates the issue. Well just incase, also check you dont have any filters configured on the router which is forcing an ip to some machine which is statically configured on some other machine. Either configure static IPs on each machines else let all machine obtain an IP automatically from router's dhcp. Also let any one router's dhcp run, turn of the dhcp on other router.

[HiSpeed]

I suspect the network address of both the router is causing the conflicts. Both routers might be in the same subnet. That is for example, if router 1 has the ip as 192.168.1.1 the other might have the same address. Change any one router's subnet by changing the second last octate of the ip address making it something liek this : 192.168.10.1 or 192.168.100.1. Once you've done this, there might not be any issues. Also it is better if you configure all your machines and routers with static IP, which will eliminate the IP Conflicting error. I hope this works. if there is anything else which is bothering you about the setup do post. Also if your router has access point capability, it will be a better setup.