Need help with switch issue

[trents]

Howdy folks! New here and need help with a home network issue after adding a switch.

I wanted to add some more ethernet ports to my peer to peer home network. I took an old TP Link wireless router loaded with DDWRT firmware that I had laying around. I disabled the wireless radio to turn it into a switch using this tutorial: How To Use a Router To Add Network Ports - SmallNetBuilder

I have two machines connected to this switch: one running Windows XP and one running Windows 7.

The problem I have is that the two computers that are downstream from the switch can see and communicate with each other but not with other computers on the home network. Sharing is turned on for all machines and all have the same workgroup name. Discovery is turned on for the Windows 8.1 machine that is connected to the Comcast Gateway device. The new switch and the gateway device have different IPs.

Is there any other info you need?

How can I get the machines on the upstream and downstream sides of the switch to see each other?

Thanks

 

[PP Mguire]

You need to turn it into a bridge. The DDWRT firmware should have an option under the Gateway drop down labeled Bridge. After turning it into a bridge you hook port 1 of your Comcast gateway into the WAN port of the TP Link. This will cause the bridged TP Link to be on the same subnet as the Comcast.

 

[trents]

Thanks for your suggestion. Before I checked for responses to my question however I had already swapped out the TP-Link router I was struggling with for another old router I had laying around, a Netgear WN1000. I just disabled the wireless radio and it seems to work fine. All computers are now visible to each other on the network. I have my doubts whether or not the TP-Link was functioning properly anyway as it was erratic. Maybe a hardware issue or a firmware issue. At the last it got to where the hard reset button wouldn't even reset it so I gave up on it and went with the Netgear.

 

[PP Mguire]

With DDWRT a proper reset requires a 30 second push in. DDWRT has a lot of advanced settings that if not set properly can cause weird things to happen. The main issue just being your two networks were on two different subnets.