Connecting two routers

[ricksingh]

Currently I have a BT 2700HGV Business Hub and a Belkin Share N300. The BT hub is located downstairs and Belkin is upstairs.
Downstairs there are 4 PCs connected to a switch, the switch is connected to the hub.
Upstairs is a totally different story, there are 3 PCs and 3 Laptops. I want to use the Belkin router upstairs to create a network for the 3pcs and 3 laptops with homegroup so that we can all share files and a printer. The pcs are all wired to the router and the laptops connect wirelessly. Downstairs i want to do the samething, have a home group between the 4 PCs. But i want them to be independant of each other.

I've had a look online regarding DHCP settings and i've played about but nothing seems to work. Anyone have any ideas?

[JorgeM]

So, I would need some clarification... Why do you want to connect two routers? Is it because you are trying to set up two homegroups and need to have two different subnets? If so, there is a work-around to creating two homegroups on the same subnet. There are various postings on microsoft related forums that suggest this as a solution...

1. Go to Network and sharing center. Change network type from Home to Public. Click Close.
2. Click "Change Advanced sharing settings". Click OK or Cancel.
3. Change network type back to "Home" and then press Next.
4. After this you may create a a new Homegroup automatically.

Put the DHCP question aside for a moment... For clarification, can you explain or provide a drawing of how you have this network connected? Do you also have one of these routers connected to the internet? How did you go about defining the two subnets on each router?

If each router has its own subnet, when you hook up two routers to each other, you need to configure the routing tables on each device so that they know about each other's subnets. For example, upstairs, you may define the 192.168.1.x/24 subnet, while downstairs you define the 192.168.2.x/24 subnet.

I hope that I am not confusing you further, so please provide some clarification on your configuration.

[ricksingh]

Thanks for getting back!
This is the setup at my warehouse and the wifi reception everywhere is poor, thats the reason I've opted to have a belkin wifi router upstairs and leave the BT hub downstairs. I've uploaded an image of the all the connections and the network below as well as the setup downstairs:
http://postimage.org/image/p5orxhfev/
http://postimage.org/image/oew1rpd1j/
http://postimage.org/image/4myh65qvb/

I've reset the both routers now, and as it stands they are both in default settings. How should i proceed from here?

[JorgeM]

So, if your goal is to create two seperate subnets, you would actually need to have a router with the ability to define two vlans, or two routers that can be connected to each other so that each router has their own network segment independent from each other.

Otherwise, if your goal is just to create two homegroups, the steps above should allow you to do that.

Now, if you just want to create two logical subnets on the same physical network (1 vlan), you can do so by cofiguring the devices with static IPs. DHCP is not going to be an option on one VLAN because the DHCP packets are broadcast based and on one VLAN all of the hosts will receive the packets. In this scenario, for example, the hosts upstairs would be configured with 192.168.1.x/24 and the downstairs with 192.168.2.x/24 addresses. The downstairs and upstairs hosts will not be able to communicate with each other if the hosts have no default gateway to route the traffic betwen them.

So in re-reading your post, if the goal is independence, why not physically disconnect the downstairs and upstairs network from each other?

Is there something else you want for them to share such as an internet connection?