Can I use a 2nd wireless router instead of an access point?
 

I have a wireless router setup, connected to a cable modem and 2 PCs. I'd like to connect my PS2 and XBox to the internet, without running wires to the router. Access points are twice the price of wireless routers. Couldn't I connect the PS2 and XBox to a 2nd (wireless) router, and configure the 2nd router to connect to the 1st one for internet access?

Some wireless router mfg's such as linksys will allow you to set the router into "repeater" mode. Over long distances its not going to work too well, but short distances through a house would work fine. To set the router into repeater mode, read the info. on the mfg's website to see what's available, how to do it and whether or not you might need a firmware upgrade.

One other way is to setup a second wireless router on a different subnet and have it gatewayed to your primary subnet. Make sure in doing this though, you set your primary subnet channel to 1 and your secondary subnet channel to 11. This way, your freq's aren't near each other and you should get maximum through put.

Ex. cable/dsl <--> (global IP, dhcp'd from ISP, gateway pulled from dhcp)<external> wireless router 1 <internal> (channel 1)(192.168.1.1) <--> <internal> (192.168.2.1, gateway is 192.168.1.1) wireless router 2 (channel 11)

Setup like that would work fine.

Wouldn't setting the channels different make it so that the 2 routers wouldn't communicate? The plan is not to have them wired together.

If I understand what you are saying, you will need a bridge between the two routers.

At least, when I wanted two routers (each connected to several devices) to communicate, that's what I had to do: hook one up to a bridge which then "connected" the two routers.

Now, linksys has a router/bridge that does both functions.

I think that is only for wired routers, I guess somehow wireless routers get around that. Also you know you dont have to have a bridge... you can use a crossover cable to get the same effect.

Thanks for the info. Now I feel better about buying the router. It seemed like I should be able to do this. If I can't get it working, once I actually buy it, I might be posting again for some help.

As far as I know, no. He would associate to router 2 for the ranged computers and router 1 for the closer ones.