networking help

[DodgeMan79]

back in april the wife and I moved in with her parents for a while. So I set up our two laptops and network printer on their network. There was already a linksys wrt54g that I joined into. the problem is there is not enough ports on the linksys to use my printer.

there are two laptops, NAS drive, and a vonage box already attached and the wife and I share the network printer. so there are some open ports in the vonage box but my software is not designed to look across the network to find the printer. i can find the ip address of the printer, vonage box itself, and the assigned ip address that is given to the vonage box by the linksys.

how can I point my laptop across the linksys box to the vonage box to the printer? is there a way to list all the ip addresses to my print configuration on my laptop so that I can use the printer while it's on the vonage box?

if anything is unclear let me know and I can reword or give a simple diagram of what everything looks like.

[Killdogg5000]

1)A simple diagram would be nice.
2)Are those laptops using a wired or wireless connection?(I'm guessing wired)
3)What kind of Vonage Box is it?

Buying a 5 port switch (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124005) will solve your problem. Just plug the switch into one of the ports on back of the WRT54G. Next, into the switch plug in the 2 laptops, the NAS, and Printer. Then, plug the Vonage box into one of the open ports of the WRT54G. You will have two open ports on the back of the WRT54G in which, you may plug whatever the parents need to be plugged in.

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/1567/networkpg3.jpg

[DodgeMan79]

I wanted to stick with one router, but adding in one shouldn't be a problem.

i did find a 4 port router, linksys BEFSR41 v2, in my stash of parts. I would like to keep my printer and NAS on the WRT54G and the vonage and parents PC on the BEFSR41. because the wireless is mostly used by me and my wife.

the BEFSR41 has an uplink port, but I can't find anything from linksys how to use it. i did find something about cascading from port to port to keep everything on the same LAN IP segment. 'which will allow sharing of network resources within the network'. so I think I'm going to give that a try.

if you have a better or more efficient way please let me know.

p.s. just thought about this. since both the WRT54G and vonage box are both routers, can't I cascade port to port and eliminate the BEFSR41? the less equipment the better.