My teacher bought a wrong router

[Tygara_191]

Hi all!

Straight to the point: In school we have internet on an RJ-45 connector. My IT teacher is a bit disorganised so he ordered two adsl routers (6-pin plug, with 1 and 6 unused).

My question is how do I make things work? Someone please explain if those standards are compatible with eachother and if yes, then can you provide a pinout of both connectors so I can rewire things to work. Thanks in advance!

[Falconevo]

ADSL generally uses an RJ11 connector, do you actually have an ADSL connection in the school that requires a modem/router or do you simply have an RJ45 cable provided by your internet supplier?

[Matt_98]

1 minute ago, Tygara_191 said:

Hi all!

Straight to the point: In school we have internet on an RJ-45 connector. My IT teacher is a bit disorganised so he ordered two adsl routers (6-pin plug, with 1 and 6 unused).

My question is how do I make things work? Someone please explain if those standards are compatible with eachother and if yes, then can you provide a pinout of both connectors so I can rewire things to work. Thanks in advance!

 

It depends some adsl routers also accept standard broadband through one of the rj-45 ports. What router is it?

[Undertaker225]

If, for some reason, you need to use an ADSL router and you happen to have an active RJ11 port, then you could always use a splitter (assuming that the port has a connection to a phone on the other end). The splitter would allow you to have the router and the phone on the same line. This does, however, present some conflicts: If both the phone and router were to have it's own public IP address, then there might be some conflict? I have honestly never done this, but as to my knowledge, you pay an ISP for a connection, typically for SOHO environments, that is a single point of access to the internet, say where the head router is connected to. I am not sure what would occur if you would have both a phone and a router hooked up to the same port going out. Not to mention that this would create some undesired static on the phone line, everytime the modem was being used to access the internet.  Good luck.

[brwainer]

Depends on the router model as @matt_98 said. Some have a second internet input which is RJ45 based, or can be made to use one of the LAN ports for WAN. Most however cannot.

[Tygara_191]

What we've got is an RJ-45 cable with internet on it (not sure where it's coming from because as I said it's at school so I am rather unfamiliar with the networking). I beleive it comes from another router that is somewhere prior in the network. As far as the model goes, it's currently saturday so I can't check right away, but I believe it's a DSL-N12E, by ASUS.

[dalekphalm]

12 hours ago, Tygara_191 said:

What we've got is an RJ-45 cable with internet on it (not sure where it's coming from because as I said it's at school so I am rather unfamiliar with the networking). I beleive it comes from another router that is somewhere prior in the network. As far as the model goes, it's currently saturday so I can't check right away, but I believe it's a DSL-N12E, by ASUS.

From the sounds of it, you don't need a router at all. You need a switch.

 

The RJ-45 connector, that's inside the classroom, yes? On the wall somewhere most likely? This will feed back into their network closet or server room, and is likely connected to a router down the line already.

 

You can, of course, use the ADSL modem/router as a dummy switch, by disabling NAT, and all the routing features. Then you simply plug the RJ-45 jack in the wall into any of the RJ-45 jacks in the ADSL modem/router, and the rest of the jacks will be fed internet.

 

That's of course, assuming you're not trying to specifically create a new isolated LAN, instead of simply extending the existing network.

 

What is the purpose of the router? Why did your teacher buy it? What are they going to use it for? Why are YOU asking this question, and not the IT teacher figuring it out on their own, or getting assistance from the school IT department?

[Emmien]

Should you be doing this? Shouldn't the school IT people be doing this? Why is your IT teacher letting you do this?

 

If you want to connect more devices, you need a switch, not a router, but it would be better for your school IT department to do this. They may be able to run several cables and patch them to an existing switch in a rack somewhere.

[Tygara_191]

12 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

From the sounds of it, you don't need a router at all. You need a switch.

 

The RJ-45 connector, that's inside the classroom, yes? On the wall somewhere most likely? This will feed back into their network closet or server room, and is likely connected to a router down the line already.

 

You can, of course, use the ADSL modem/router as a dummy switch, by disabling NAT, and all the routing features. Then you simply plug the RJ-45 jack in the wall into any of the RJ-45 jacks in the ADSL modem/router, and the rest of the jacks will be fed internet.

 

That's of course, assuming you're not trying to specifically create a new isolated LAN, instead of simply extending the existing network.

 

What is the purpose of the router? Why did your teacher buy it? What are they going to use it for? Why are YOU asking this question, and not the IT teacher figuring it out on their own, or getting assistance from the school IT department?

Because he is a tech retard and will mess up the entire network, the router he got is for my classroom, so I benefit from having it properly configured. I want it to be a seporate lan from the already existent networking because the school network is a complete mess - computers with matching IP's, improperly used routers&switches and so on and so on. And ofc I want wifi in my class room - another reason to use a router instead of a switch. But by what I read, this one is just not going to make it.

[Tygara_191]

10 hours ago, Emmien said:

Should you be doing this? Shouldn't the school IT people be doing this? Why is your IT teacher letting you do this?

 

If you want to connect more devices, you need a switch, not a router, but it would be better for your school IT department to do this. They may be able to run several cables and patch them to an existing switch in a rack somewhere.

That teacher is the school IT department  and he has basic theoretical knowledge of networking. So the school network is an absolute mess - and now this... I could not stand it anymore. The new router is for my class room so I don't want IP conflicts and such on the network I am going to be using.

[dalekphalm]

23 minutes ago, Tygara_191 said:

Because he is a tech retard and will mess up the entire network, the router he got is for my classroom, so I benefit from having it properly configured. I want it to be a seporate lan from the already existent networking because the school network is a complete mess - computers with matching IP's, improperly used routers&switches and so on and so on. And ofc I want wifi in my class room - another reason to use a router instead of a switch. But by what I read, this one is just not going to make it.

Yep well in that case, you definitely want a regular Router. Pretty much anything will do, as long as it's a standard router, without an integrated Modem (Like that ADSL unit).

 

Do you need Gigabit speeds, or is 10/100 Ethernet sufficient? Basically, just make sure he buys the absolute cheapest router that has the features you need, which shouldn't be much, beyond what speed you want on the WAN/LAN ports.

 

One thing to look out for is some routers might give you Gigabit on the LAN ports, but the WAN port is only 10/100. If the rest of the school network was Gigabit, this would essentially limit your subLAN to 100Mbps.

 

This should be clearly listed in the official specs, and on the box too usually. Just make sure that if you need Gigabit, both WAN and LAN are specified.

[Tygara_191]

26 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Yep well in that case, you definitely want a regular Router. Pretty much anything will do, as long as it's a standard router, without an integrated Modem (Like that ADSL unit).

 

Do you need Gigabit speeds, or is 10/100 Ethernet sufficient? Basically, just make sure he buys the absolute cheapest router that has the features you need, which shouldn't be much, beyond what speed you want on the WAN/LAN ports.

 

One thing to look out for is some routers might give you Gigabit on the LAN ports, but the WAN port is only 10/100. If the rest of the school network was Gigabit, this would essentially limit your subLAN to 100Mbps.

 

This should be clearly listed in the official specs, and on the box too usually. Just make sure that if you need Gigabit, both WAN and LAN are specified.

Will do, thanks for the help! Appreciate it!

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Tygara_191 said:

That teacher is the school IT department  and he has basic theoretical knowledge of networking. So the school network is an absolute mess - and now this... I could not stand it anymore. The new router is for my class room so I don't want IP conflicts and such on the network I am going to be using.

 

1 hour ago, Tygara_191 said:

Because he is a tech retard and will mess up the entire network, the router he got is for my classroom, so I benefit from having it properly configured. I want it to be a seporate lan from the already existent networking because the school network is a complete mess - computers with matching IP's, improperly used routers&switches and so on and so on. And ofc I want wifi in my class room - another reason to use a router instead of a switch. But by what I read, this one is just not going to make it.

Everything about that is soul crushing . I'm also rather dubious about the basic networking knowledge because none of that should be a problem if it were true.

 

 

What @dalekphalm said is spot on and I hope it goes well. Only annoying thing is I now have a urge to come fix the actual network problem but you are way too far away to do that .

 

If you can't return the ADSL router often LAN1 can be switched to WAN mode and it will do what you want, you'll have one less LAN port ofc.

[Tygara_191]

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Everything about that is soul crushing . I'm also rather dubious about the basic networking knowledge because none of that should be a problem if it were true.

 

If you can't return the ADSL router often LAN1 can be switched to WAN mode and it will do what you want, you'll have one less LAN port ofc.

I intend to try that first thing tomorrow, and am also rather irritated by the network and want to just redo it myself SOOO bad... But it's a rather large one and is ran through walls and such, so no one knows what is really going on... Would take a few days to just figure out which cable goes where - let alone properly rewiring the whole thing. What makes me sad though is the fact that I, as a student (currently 11 grade), have a greater practical knowledge than the person who is supposed to be teaching me...

[leadeater]

5 minutes ago, Tygara_191 said:

I intend to try that first thing tomorrow, and am also rather irritated by the network and want to just redo it myself SOOO bad... But it's a rather large one and is ran through walls and such, so no one knows what is really going on... Would take a few days to just figure out which cable goes where - let alone properly rewiring the whole thing. What makes me sad though is the fact that I, as a student (currently 11 grade), have a greater practical knowledge than the person who is supposed to be teaching me...

It's highly likely no wiring work will need to be done to fix most if not all the issues. Problem is to fix it significant down time would be required and that's a hard sell, along with buying replacement equipment where needed but that doesn't have to be expensive. There's tons of Cisco, Allied Telesis, HP etc enterprise switches on ebay for cheap that will last for many years.

 

Real time problem isn't the networking equipment though, it's all those static IP assigned conflicting devices and DHCP server work. It's surprising how time consuming the small things can be.