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I have a linksys wireless router which I use as a switch, not a router, inside an office in an office building. We have certain settings we have to setup for every client computer in order to work with the network (ie: ip address, subnet, default gateway, dns). I was wondering if there was a was to automatically setup these details and assign a correct ip address to wifi clients of the linksys router?
Keep in mind that I have some wired clients as well which have their connection details already setup.
This can be done by setting up the DHCP server function on the router. Before suggesting this, however, we should know more details. Firstly, what device is acting as a router on the network? Is it a device you control? If it is a device you control, does it have DHCP server capabilities you could use? Is the entire network (between your client devices and the nearest router) under your organization's control, or shared with other building occupants? Are there other active DHCP servers on the network, anywhere? – Iszi – 2012-05-16T17:21:00.993
@Iszi The actual router is out of our control and is shared for the entire building. We have been told by the network admins to manually set details for each machine to ensure they are all put on the correct office network. It may be some sort of VPN i suppose (I don't know much about that). It would make since if we could setup a DHCP for the network so we don't have to manually set these details for all our client machines/devices. – David – 2012-05-17T08:59:12.507
You could still run DHCP, presuming you won't cause conflicts with other DHCP servers, if you use a limited pool size and address reservations. Set the pool to only the IP space that's allocated to your office, and configure address reservations for all your devices. This way, the devices are being automatically configured while still getting the same address every time. – Iszi – 2012-05-17T12:32:20.350
Ok, i think i've done that right, but I then need to 'fwd' a default gateway to these clients, so it's not the linksys router, but instead its the one that all other wired client computers use. – David – 2012-05-17T13:40:36.290
That may or may not be a configurable option on your router. A real DHCP server would let you configure this, though. Is there any particular reason you couldn't just set up the router as an actual router with NAT (the way it's designed to be), so that your office has its own private IP space? – Iszi – 2012-05-17T14:09:19.027