Two modems/routers in one house?

Hello! I'm getting ready to move to a new place. I'm moving into the second floor of someone's house and they already have a router downstairs that I can use as part of my rent.

I am concerned that the internet won't be as good as I would like as I have had bad luck with wireless internet before. There is a coax cable connection in my part of the house - is it possible to hook a new modem and a new router up to this connected and be fine? Can two modems and two routers be running simultaneously on the same internet service?

Thank you!

You CAN have a second modem. You'll both be on totally different connections, IPs, etc. This is assuming cable. I don't know how DSL would handle, but I imagine it wouldn't be possible.

On the other hand, you can run a single ethernet line to your floor/room and then have a regular ol' wireless router on the network. You would just need to be sure to connect it to your computer first and disable the DHCP server option and to change the IP address of your router to something not used on the network, such as 192.168.1.2 if their router is 192.168.1.1. Or you could isolate yourself from their network by giving yourself a different subnet. You can do this by changing the "192.168.1" to something like "192.168.0.x" or "192.160.1.x"

If you need help with any of it, send me a PM. I don't get notices for call outs unfortunately.

With cable you can if the provider allows it.

With DSL you cannot due to how it works.

Thank you so much for the help, guys.

Does anyone know if Cox Cable is cool with two modems? Some brief Internet perusal seems to indicate that they may charge me for having a second one hooked up.

@b0hicah: It'd be best to call them and ask. I dont know off hand. Sorry.

@b0hicah: If you want 2 routers then you are going to have to pay for a separate connection as that'S what you'll have.

If your concern is WiFi rather than needing a dedicated connection a wireless a access point/repeater is what you want. However you need to get a wired signal to your floor for an access point to work, I don't have any personal experience with repeaters.

Agreed.

If you want your own wired, dedicated connection from Cox, then you'll need your own coax cable (which you have), your own modem (which they'll give you unless you have your own already), and, that's right, your own bill. From there, you can hook up your own wireless router and create your own wireless/wired network upstairs with all your computers and devices. Granted, this is if Cox allows you to have 2 modems in the same house. And if they do, I'm betting they won't let that go for free.

If you just want a dedicated ethernet connection from the router downstairs, then you just need to figure out how to get a long ethernet cable upstairs to your place OR investigate ethernet over power line. I don't know how the latter works, so you'll have to do that research on your own. The former is pretty easy besides routing the ethernet cable around the house so it doesn't look too bad.

I'm fairly sure that @cheapandtacky is right: if you're planning on getting a second connection out of the coax via a modem + router then you'll need to open your own account with the cable internet provider. From your OP it sounded like you didn't want your own service, but rather to piggyback onto what is already there. It is worth giving the provider a call to see if they can offer what you want but from my limited knowledge of how it works, I seriously doubt it.

To me, the "right" way to do this is to run cat5 from the existing router up to the second floor (possibly beside or even replacing the existing coax). Obviously you'd need permission to do this; your landlord should consider it a value-add though :)

Also, wireless may not be as terrible as you think; it totally depends on the router and the location (i.e. neighbours). I've found that in a house it is typically way better than in an apartment/condo. Worth a test in my opinion. The idea that gaming over wifi is terrible is a bit of a myth (though there certainly can be such a thing as an unreliable connection): the latency over a good wifi link is negligible (~1ms) compared to internet latency (~100ms). So check if your ping time to the wifi router is consistently low; hopefully there aren't a ton of other nearby networks or lots of computers on the network.