multiple pcs - router

[ezygeezer]

wonder if anyone can help.
i know i am being cheap and the best answer is to buy cable/wireless router: however i wonder if anyone has got this to work.

i am a new virgin user and online fine. however i have a pc and laptop both with wireless capabilty and working fine on old adsl line.
i can connect my new virgin modem via LAN to either unit and online fine. i can connect the virgin modem via a Dlink ADSL wireless router to either pc or laptop and the first unit goes online fine (it seems to be getting the ip via dhcp through the modem) but the second unit does not get ip address. whichever unit is connected first gets online then nothing. i also cannot get online via wireless ( using static ip locked to MAC using 192.168 range) on either unit (yes wireless conected and setup fine i can browse the router with ie) it seems the adsl router is working like a hub and not routing.
i do have the option of changing my router settings and adding a routing table and not use the pvc connection (adsl) but am assuming this would not work until i have a static ip assigned by virgin.
just wondering if anyone has attempted similar setup without using static ip WAN and has any useful pointers

[Graham M]

You will need a new router, as you have worked out yourself, connecting everything to the LAN ports is making it act as a Switch and not a router.

[Richy99]

you a cable customer or ADSL customer?

[ezygeezer]

richy - im using cable now and trying to be cheap and use my old ADSL router to route to cable modem via LAN as i am happy with the hardware firewall/NAT/port forwarding and security of my old equipment.

[MovedGoalPosts]

The cable modem can only detect a single connected LAN side device, be that router, or computer. By trying to be clever and using your current ADSL router's LAN ports only as a switch, all that is happening is the modem sees the first device plugged into the router and then gets rather confused.

The firewall etc of the router won't work if you are just using it as a switch. The firewall relies on blocking traffic passing between WAN (internet) and LAN side ports. A switch doesn't interfere with traffic it's just a junction box.

Ebay the ADSL router and get a cable compatible one instead.