I seek some professional advice. I have 2 Routers, and an 8-port switch.
What I am trying to is understand the following.
Router 1 - Main Router - Modem to Router 1 = WAN From Router 1 to Router 2
Do I attach the LAN cable to the WAN Port or one of the other four ports?
Can I attach a LAN Cable from Router 2 - one of the four ports to the 8 - port switch?
Do both Routers maintain the same static IP addresses i.e., (192.168.0.1) - (192.168.0.1) ???
Do i attach the LAN cable to the WAN Port or to one of the other 4 ports ? 'WAN' is Wide Area Network and the wire from the wall installed by your cable or phone company goes into that port.
What you have in a home or office is a Local Area Network ('LAN').
Ideally, the switch (8-port) connects to the output of your 'modem', and each of the PCs can attach to the switch; standard Ethernet cables can be up to 100 meters (330') long. Your 'routers' are probably redundant and probably can be set aside, unless you have more than seven PCs.
Your 'modem' from the cableco or telco will assign the IP addresses, and every PC in your home LAN will be on the same local network.
It depends on your objectives and concerns.
If your goal is to use only what you need with minimal devices with the least power consumption for a small network then you can likely eliminate the switch and routers from the network completely.
If your goal is separation of networks (separate 'office' & 'guest' networks, for example) then you can plug both routers into the modem and they will each operate independently (by default). They will each receive an IP address from the modem via DHCP and create their own VLANs for their connected devices and assign their own subset of IP addresses (usually in the 192.168.x/24 scope). They might both even use 192.168.0/24, but since they're creating their own VLAN this means devices connected to one router won't talk to devices on the other router. Don't use the same Wi-Fi configuration for both routers, of course. Also, disable the Wi-Fi on the modem.
If your goal is maximum security and range with the most available ports on a single shared network environment, then your best option is to plug router1 into the modem and run an ethernet cable to the uplink on router2. Make sure that you configure router2 in AP mode which means it will disable DHCP and allow devices connected to it to talk to the devices on the other network points. You can plug your switch anywhere along either of these networks (except directly to the modem) to add network ports to the network.
You should also understand that network devices (modems, routers, and switches) are generally the low-hanging fruit for network compromise with extensive . If you're not going to maintain each device (strong unique passwords, regular firmware updates and security checks) then you should eliminate them to remove the additional risk from your network.
