[bot]

A router is a separating network element. It separates two networks and allows certain traffic to cross. Sometimes this is necessary in a network setup but for most home networks it only creates a lot of obstacles.

1. In default Gateway mode the second router does network address translation (NAT). This means computers connected to the second router can connect to computers connected to the first router but not in the opposite direction.

2. If you use Router mode on the second router: you have to configure "routes" on the first router and possibly your computer connected to the first router so that IP packets find their way into the subnet of the second router.

3. You have two separate ethernet networks and thus two "broadcast" domains. A broadcast in the first router's subnet reaches all computers connected there. The same applies to the second router. A broadcast will never cross the second router, though. This is an obstacle for applications that depend on broadcasting to locate other computers and services. Windows file and printer sharing is one example here. With the second router in between, computers on one side do not know about computers on the other side. You cannot search your workgroup for the computer on the other side even when they use the identical workgroup name. You will be able to access the other computer using the IP address directly (e.g. \\192.168.1.100\share) but that's usually a hassle and the IP address may change if it is assigned by the DHCP server to the computer. There are ways to deal with some of these issues (e.g. save the host names in lmhosts files...) but all this requires more effort and attention to keep everything up-to-date.

4. Port forwardings become more complicated. If you need a port forwarding (i.e. you want a port on a computer in your network to be accessible from the internet) on a computer connected to the second router you have to setup two forwardings: one on the first router to the second router and one on the second router to the computer.

5. If you have two wireless routers: you cannot roam between both routers without loosing the connection. This is simply because if a wireless computers moves from one router to the other it needs a different IP address.

6. The whole configuration becomes more complicated: you always have to think about where to configure what, e.g. dynamic DNS service, access restrictions, ...

Bottom line: unless you have good reasons why you must have some computers separated from the other computers in your network, there is no good reason to in a home network to do so. For normal home networking with simple to use file and printer sharing it is better to connect the second router as suggested in this post...