What do you do if your room is out of range of the WiFi? Or perhaps your modem only has ethernet ports, and you need to connect multiple wireless devices to the internet. What do you do then? Can you join two modems to give you the functionality you need? Let’s see.
You can have a second modem in your home, which can connect to the first and share its internet connection while being on the same home network. You can also have two modems boosting internet speeds with two separate accounts and utilize them on different networks. There are many functional reasons why you would implement a second modem.
This article will look at if you are able to have two modems in one house and then, if that is possible if you can actually have them on the same network sharing an internet connection. We’ll look at the benefits of why you would want to do this and, in fact, explain to you how to do it.
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Can you have two modems in one house?
You can indeed have two modems in one house, i.e., a second modem. Using two modems in one house can help you achieve various results that may make your home network that much better. One aspect where two modems in one house are beneficial is managing your bandwidth much more efficiently. This can help you manage your internet speed among many devices.
Many people think that you need two internet accounts from your ISP if you are using two modems, but they, in fact, can be connected to a single internet account. Another cool thing is that if you connect them up together and each has their own interent account, you can essentially double up your internet speed.
You may think that this is redundant because you could just as well get a faster line which may actually be cheaper, and then you only require one modem and less hassle. Well, you would use two modems, as we said, for specific reasons. Perhaps an individual in your house does not want to be on the same home network, or there may be an instance where your cable modem does not have enough ethernet ports, and you require another for more wired connections in your home.
You might then say, well, why not purchase a router with more ethernet ports? Again, there are various situations why you may need to have two modems. The fact of the matter remains that you can have two modems linking them up together using the same internet account or two different accounts. It all depends on your needs and goals.
Can you have a second modem on the same network?
It is definitely possible to have two routers and even more than two routers on the same home network. There are many features that a second modem can supply that you may not be aware of. Let’s look at a few of the benefits of having two routers (second modem) on the same home network.
Network separation and network isolation
Suppose you use specific devices on your network to transfer data within the home network and don’t use the internet all that much. Instances of this may be LAN gaming and media servers. It would be more beneficial to keep them connected to one router keeping the traffic low and not affecting the router that connects to the internet.
Two modems offer a wider signal range
What is great about having two modems in your house is that you can extend the WiFi range to encompass a larger area. Nowadays, you will probably have a wireless router, so you may think that having a second one is unnecessary. However, for homes built with concrete walls and ones with two or three floors, it becomes difficult for the WiFi to reach devices situated behind and further away from your router.
Having a second WiFi Router doesn’t usually mean that you want to cover a larger area but rather make the WiFi signal stronger in weaker areas of your home.
Furthermore, if you have two cable modems, you could also join those together. As we said, perhaps some devices need to utilize the home network more frequently, so you could run a separate router to that area of the house, connect it up with a wired or WiFi connection and then link up the devices to that router.
One thing to note is that there are WiFi extenders and access points that are available and that can be used in place of a second modem. This will just depend on your situation and what you need to achieve with your network. An access point will typically be used for public and commercial applications. In contrast, a WiFi extender will be used to extend only one network, while a second modem can expand the network or be used in conjunction with a different internet account.
Wireless and wired devices support
Let’s say you have a cable router that connects to your ISP, and your PC connects to this modem. Then perhaps a family member is on the second floor but wants to enjoy browsing social media from their phone, but your cable modem only supplies direct connections. You can connect a wireless router to the initial modem and set up the wireless router to extend the range of the internet wirelessly. Not to mention you will be allowed to connect up more devices which we will look at next.
More device support for wired and wireless devices
Typically a cable modem will come with four or five ethernet ports (network connection points). This may not be enough in some instances. Sure your router may have WiFi capability, but you want a solid connection in some cases because it is always faster and more reliable (doesn’t drop the connection) than a wireless connection. Having two modems in this scenario will benefit you greatly.
How do you connect two modems together on the same home network?
Suppose you only have one internet connection and you would like to link two modems together. You can achieve this by setting the one modem to run in brige mode and connect it via an ethernet cable to the first modem. The bridging mode will allow the second router to share the firsts internet connection.
What you will need to do is connect to each modem individually and adjust the settings. If your modem that is connected to the internet does not have its IP address and subnet mask displayed on the bottom of it, you will need to log into it and retrieve this information.
Once you have this information, you will connect to the second modem and disable its “DHCP” settings. This will sometimes be listed as enabling “bridge mode.” The next thing you will do is change the IP address of this router to reflect the address of the first router but changing the last digit to be one number higher than that of your original router. For example, 192.168.0.1 will be the internet router, and 192.168.0.2 will be the second router.
Following that, you will change the second router’s default gateway to match the first router’s IP address. You will then need to connect the two routers together using a wired connection. Take note not to use the second router’s WAN port.
In the wireless settings of your second router, you must disable “automatic channel selection” and manually set the channel to 8 or any other number not being used by any other router on the network.
The last thing you need to do is set the wireless security of the second router to be identical to that of the first router. You now have a shared home network utilizing two routers.
Conclusion
We discovered that you indeed could have two modems in one house, and you can have them operating in unison or apart depending on what you are looking to achieve with your network. The modems can be sharing an internet connection being on the same home network or sharing an internet connection while on two different networks. The options are almost limitless, and not to mention you can even have more than two routers on the network.
We also found out the benefits and why you would do this along with other devices built to be connected to a network and extend its capabilities. Lastly, we detailed how to set up a typical scenario of two modems on the same network sharing one internet connection. By now, you should be well versed in modems and home networking and be able to satisfy any network operation an apartment building could throw at you.
