AM300 and WRT54G

Question

i have a linksys AM300 modem and a linksys WRT54G router Internet is connected to the PC via the router. Currently the DHCP is disabled in the modem and enabled at the router.  the user name and password is typed into the routers web config and the internet connection is working perfectly. I have only one PC connected to port 1 of the router and able to access the router at ip 192.168.1.1 but i unable to access the modem utility from the PC. The router and the modem have the same default IP address but since they are in two different segments I thought there wont be any problems. Could you please tell me in DETAIL how I can set the IP addresses, DHCP settings etc of the router and the modem .... so that ill be able to access the modems config utility in the setup.  Should all DHCP be enabled in both router and modem....? and please note  that I am able to access the modem connected straight to the PC without the router..........but when wired in series only the router can be accessed. Pls help me....

Answer 1

For some list of cons see this post. Some of those points do not apply if you don't connect any computers directly to the routing modem.
I add/repeat some points here:
* Two hops are slower. Each router needs time to do the router. It may also limit the bandwidth.
* Two hops are more difficult to manage. You'll have to manage two devices for internet instead of one.
* Port forwarding is a mess. You have to do the forwarding on two routers.
* Remote management gets more difficult if needed.
* For any internet related services you have to figure out on which device you have to configure it, e.g. DDNS must be configured on the routing modem. The function on the inner router does not work for you.
* Programs (e.g. some games) which use UPnP to open ports fail, because they can only open ports on the inner router not on the outer one.
* Regarding security due to 2 NATs: NAT is an attempt to map a single IP address to multiple private ones. It is in the nature of this mapping that it is incomplete and not without flaws. Running two of those NATs behind each other adds to this flaws and does not make it better (just like two firewalls on a computer is worse then a single one because both will interfere somehow). First, the NAT on the outer one is pretty useless. It just maps one IP address to another (the IP address of the inner router). NAT implementations vary. Some use different timeouts. Strange things can happen with two NATs. E.g. suppose the outer router expires open ports for replies after 2 minutes while the inner one does it after 1 minute. You'll send something out. The response port is open for two minutes on the outer router. After one minute the inner router closes this port. But within the next minute some new completely unrelated transmission may open up this port on the inner router again. Now you get a response on the still open port on the outer router which forwards it to the port on the inner router which is now associated differently. It may be hard to exploit something like this but it may well disrupt your communications.
Check the manual of the modem to find out about the meaning of the LEDs. Generally, anything which is connected to the internet gets scanned frequently my some internet worm, malware, etc. That is just the standard background "noise" in the internet.
A computer can have as many IP addresses that it wants. It can also have several gateways which connect it to the internet. If you don't change the metric values in the IP protocol settings Windows tries to choose the fastest connection. It decides this based on the port speed. Thus if you connect to the internet through a 56 Kbit/s modem and through a 100 Mbit/s ethernet port it will prefer the ethernet port, regardless of the actual speed you have on the ethernet port (e.g. DSL with 5 Mbit/s).
You can manually adjust this by setting the metric values in the IP protocol settings. A lower value means less cost on this connection and thus is prefered. But in general, you won't have to change anything there. The automatic mechanism should work well in most home networks...