Need a network wizard

[gene heskett]

Howdy folks;

I have a home network that is all behind a NATing router, in this case a 
netgear WNR2000V3, hooked to a cable modem at its WAN port, and one of its 
LAN ports is plugged into an 8 port switch.

So far, so good. All of the machines plugged into the 8 port switch that 
are generally up 24/7 have their own fixed addresses set in the ifcfg-eth0 
files, with Network-Manager either removed or disabled.  Suitable entries 
of course in all the hosts files.

200 feet of cat5 away, is a small Linksys 4 port workgroup 10/100 hub, with 
at least 2 more machines, one of them another 80 feet away but its an old, 
slow box I use for a sacrificial goat, hence its name is also goat.

But I need to replace this 4 port + uplink 'hub', with something that looks 
like a hub, but also contains an access point, so my laptop can be used 
without stringing another 25 feet of cat5 around to trip over.

So I bought another netgear WGR614V10 and hauled it to this 'shop' 
building.  More or less out of the box, and with the cable from this house 
switch plugged into the WAN port, and the netgear WNR2000V3 gave it an 
address on the local network exactly as the netgear WNR2000V3 is set to do.

That in turn, because the WGR614V10 still had its dhcp server enabled, gave 
the laptops cat5 connection an address in its default 192.168.1.X mapping 
when the laptop, which I had just installed ubuntu 10.04 LTS on, and worked 
well enough that it only took the lappy about 2 hours to pull in the build-
essentials, kde-full, and then a full update to the newest stuff in the 
10.04 LTS repo.  Nice.

But, because the cable coming from this machine via the local 8 port, was 
hitting the WAN port, everything behind that WAN port is invisible to me, 
and I normally do about 2/3rds of the work on that shop box from here where 
I have AC and a nice comfy chair.

Now to show how little I actually know, I reasoned that this WGR614V10 
really should function as a hub with a radio if I plugged my cable into a 
LAN port, and changed its LAN IP to this network by giving it an address on 
my local net. It would then function as a hub just like the hub I'd been 
using, but with a radio too.

And that is the roadblock.  Regardless of what I set the "to be unused" WAN 
ports address to, trying to apply my local network address to the LAN port 
is refused as it clashes with the WAN port.

Can this be done at all?  With a better router perhaps? This WGR614V10 was 
only $36 at Wallies & I don't really need the latest $250 whiz-bang unit 
that can talk 1/4 mile or more. In fact, my pocket sniffer can see other 
routers around me, one of the stronger ones is actually about 300 feet 
away!

What if I re-install the hub, plug this units WAN port into the hub & let 
it send the DHCP requests on upstream.  Don't use the LAN ports at all, 
just the radio, with NAT turned off, even the lappy's DHCP requests should 
get a usable local address.  Or even better, turn off the DHCP requests and 
give the lappy a known address, which would greatly simplify network access 
from any machine to any machine that is known in the hosts file.

Can someone please straighten me out on this while I still have some hair?

Thanks.

Cheers, gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.