Mike,

I have the same device in my networking system. My answer may not be 100% correct, but here is my SWAG:

The device was designed to serve as a router with DHCP server capabilities, in other words it hands out IP addresses to requests that come from one of the output ports.

You can access the device using its web page and turn that feature off, it then acts as a bridge router and the DHCP functioning will come from further upsteam, from your other router.

The network will not function correctly if you have two different devices trying to pass out IP addresses using DHCP. Everything pretty much quits talking to each other.

While I have never tried using the device by plugging everything only into the output ports, I am guessing that connection setup would use the device as a bare dumb switch. No more double DHCP, only happy connectivity.

I am reasonably sure my explanation is not technically correct, but is functional. I was quite loose with input, output, upstream, and  downstream analogies, but that is the way I think of them.

By the way on a separate item, it is my understanding that most of these devices are hacked and infected and should be either upgraded, or replaced. I have yet to do either, but I think that is the case.

HM

On 10/17/2014 03:08 PM, Michael Havens wrote:

That is the router I have. On the back there are 4 LAN ports and another port labled Internet. My setup had the cable from the modem feeding into that port and everything worked until a couple of days ago. Today I switched that cable to a LAN port and everything worked again. I asked in another thread the purpose of the internet port and MR Butash gave me an answer but it is still a lot hazy. In my research to answer the question myself I found a wikipedia article that states:

The original WRT54G was first released in December 2002. It has a 4+1 port network switch (the Internet/WAN port is part of the same internal network switch, but on a different VLAN).

My questions: What is that port for if not to be an input port for the internet

and

Why was it working as an input port for the internet and why did it stop working as such?

:-)~MIKE~(-:

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