things they forget to tell you (or tips for connecting a wireless router to another router)

The subject line may seem a bit confusing here, but I just purchased my second Netgear WR514 wireless router. The first sits in my home where it has been providing consistent wireless connectivity for 6 months now. This second one now sits in my office providing me and anyone on the second floor with high speed internet access.

Now, the Internet signal I get has already been run through a router and a variety of other mechanisms to stretch it from the building where the signal originates to my building (includes fiber optic cable). When I put in the "easy installation" CD, I immediately got an error message indicating that the software was not compatible with a 64 bit driver (I run 64 bit Vista). So after scouring the web for 30 minutes, I figured out that Netgear, though not mentioning any 64 bit compatibility issues with their set up program, has no real solution. I was essentially stuck with trying to set things up manually or try to track down someone else's computer that ran XP or 32 bit Vista. A back up program I found said that due to multiple routers being used, I could not set this router up anyway.

Then I remembered something a friend had been told by another friend, one of those "hey did you know that..." deals that you tuck away but don't pay a lot of attention to. It goes like this; most wireless routers will basically act as an access point or a splitter if you run the incoming routed signal (the ethernet cable) into one of the hubs labeled 1, 2, 3, or 4 on the back instead of running that ethernet cable into the "internet" port on the back of the router. This way, the router does not have IP issues and just splits the signal. Having never tried it, I was curious.

Trial #1 - Is there internet access?
After plugging the ethernet cable coming out of my wall into port 1, I ran another ethernet cable from port 2 to my computer's network card. Lo and behold, internet access. So hardwiring works great and I can now run up to three computers hardwired off this router.

Trial #2 - This is the more important one, is this already functioning wirelessly without logging into the device?
I detached the ethernet cable from my network card, waited for the little earth icon to go away and the dreaded red "x" to appear in the bottom right corner, and then switched my wireless adapter on. I immediately picked up a "netgear" signal, connected, and am currently writing this over a wireless connection.

So, 2 for 2 on that one. The only major drawbacks are that I can't set up a security code (which I wasn't going to do anyway) and I can't communicate with the router using this laptop in any simple manner, again I don't really need to do that. What I needed was hardwired access and wireless access and I got both in less than five minutes.