How to use RTP300 and Trendnet Tw100 routers together

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: May 28, 2008 Posts: 2

Hello,

My family has been having lots of problems with my RTP300 router in recent months. It's not that it has suddenly gone bad, but rather that it seems incapable of handling the amount of connections my family wishes to use. We need to use it for our phone service, but as it is split between four comupters it frequently can't handle it and just dies and needs to be rebooted. Needless to say, this is incredibly annoying, and we often miss calls since when it dies, our phone dies too. What I would like to do (rather than getting a new phone service, as we do like Vonage) is to use another router for our computers (a Trendnet Tw100-S4W1CA) and hook the RTP300 into that router so that we can keep using the phone. I was told that this is possible, but I am not wise in the ways of routers. Could someone perhaps guide me through the process of doing this? Thank you in advance,

Jesse

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

You should check out Nate Hoy's article on setting up routers with Vonage here. In the meanwhile, the main things to remember are these. Get the new router working and then plug the old RTP300 into one of its LAN ports- RTP300 WAN to router LAN. Set up QoS on the new router to favor the Vonage box. In the RTP300 setup, disable the RTP300 as a DHCP server. Plug all your computers into the new router rather than into the LAN side of the RTP300.

This way you're using the RTP300 as an adapter only, and not as a router. If you must use it as a router and plug computers into its LAN ports, enable it as a DHCP server but make sure that its LAN side address range is different from the one being used by the primary router. For example, if the primary router is using 192.168.15.xxx, use 192.168.16.xxx for the RTP300.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: May 28, 2008 Posts: 2

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried setting it up, but for some reason I cannot get into the Tw100-S4W1CA. I know it works, as I was using it while living in the dorms just a few weeks ago. When I hook the internet up to it, and plug my pc into it, all of the correct lights light up, and the computer notices it's plugged in, but there is no internet, and I can't access the router via http://192.168.0.1/ (which is what the manual says to use) or 192.168.1.1 (which their website says to use). Now, while I was at school the IT people configured it so that it would act as a switch (I believe that's the term they used. It involved plugging the internet into a lan port instead of the wan port if that helps.), and I thought that might be causing the problems, so I used a pin to reset the router, but that didn't do anything either. Any ideas of what could be wrong, or should I move over to the Trendnet site to ask about this? Thanks.

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

I would have expected the reset on the Trendnet to be the right move. Since that didn't do it, going to the Trendnet site is your best bet.

Are you sure that you held the reset button in long enough? Some of these things require around 30 seconds.

Posts: 25 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Mar 31, 2008 Posts: 25

Some routers are very tricky to reset. You might have to try all kinds of possibilities. One version that works on most routers is to
1. press the reset button and HOLD IT DOWN
2. unplug the power cord 9...still holding!)
3. wait 20 seconds (...and still holding)
4. plug the power back in (...guess what...still holding)
5. wait another 20 seconds (...be patient...almost done!)
5. release the reset button
6. move your fingers to get the blood circulating again.

With all this IP settings - don't forget that the IP address is only one half of the cake! Keep your subnet mask at 255.255.255.0 ( or /24) when you do this. If you have to use your Vonage box as a switch, disable DHCP on it and change it's own IP address to something within the range of the main router.