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After our ISP changed something in our DSL modem, our wireless router suddenly stopped working properly.
Before, our DSL modem was accessible via a local address (192.168.1.1). We got a wireless router (Linksys WRT54GC), and configured our home network like so:
- DSL modem -- 192.168.2.1
- Wireless router -- WAN: 192.168.2.2, LAN: 192.168.1.1
- PCs and laptops -- DHCP starting from 192.168.1.100
Then, a few months ago, our ISP called to say they're sending someone to adjust some settings in our DSL modem. After the reconfiguration, our DSL modem was no longer directly accessible. Whether it was our PC or our wireless router, whatever was directly connected to the DSL modem gets assigned a public IP address via DHCP.
That was when our wireless router went bonkers. At first, we just experienced frequent disconnections, and we had to reboot our wireless router or let our DSL modem reconnect to our ISP. A couple of weeks later, our wireless router stopped serving us entirely.
My brother, who's a bit more hardware-savvy than me, says that the easiest way to probably fix it was to set out wireless router to act as a bridge. He says, that way, each device connected to it would be assigned an IP address by our ISP. We checked our wireless router's control panel, but couldn't find anything to set it to bridge. We later learned that Linksys WRT54GC routers (this is the compact model), well, SUCK, in terms of configurability. It was also impossible to re-flash it with open source firmwares.
What else should I check and try to reconfigure?
Do I need to change our wireless router?