Subnetmask issue with RVS4000, need more IP's, maybe multiple non-overlapping DHCP servers might help?

[Nalta1337]

Okay I work for a conference center and we have been burned before by larger groups because our current router (Cisco RVS4000) seems to not allow for more than 254 ip's. Now we are finally looking into upgrading to something that will get us out of that but it just occured to me that all our access points, which are Linksys E4200 wireless routers, also seem to not allow for free change of subnet mask.

So I'm looking for ideas as to my next course of action, If I get us a new router, will I not be able to comunicate between that and our AP's?

Is there something I'm missing and could I possibly change the subnet mask of all of these through a command prompt, or at least something that isn't this infernal drop-down menu. I need to find a way to make this work with as few purchases as possible, but I'm not against a couple worthwhile ones...

Any help would be immensly appreciated!

EDIT: Changed title to reflect new thought, I'm going to try disabling the DHCP server on the RVS4000 and instead have each AP assign IP's on different ranges... its a long shot...

Double Edit, apparently the Linksys E4200 really doesn't want to assign IP's on anything other than 192.168.1.XXX

[John Blakley]

I'm not a linksys person, but I seem to remember that dhcp can't be changed off of the private side address. If your private side address is 192.168.1.1/24, then the dhcp range usually starts at 192.168.1.100 - 254/24. Have you tried changing the internal interface to something with a shorter mask to see if you can assign a higher amount of addresses? Try changing one device to 10.10.0.1/16, and then see if you can assign ranges 10.10.0.100 - 10.10.255.254/16.

HTH,

John

[Nalta1337]

The only way I see to change the mask is a dinky dropdown menu that allows only for 255.255.255.XXX and that goes for both the RVS4000 and the E4200, so I'm thinking that if I'm going to do anything better than that, I'm going to need to figure out how to do it in a command line.

Now if I change the RVS4000 to somethingl like 192.168.2.1, it then changes the DHCP range to 192.168.2.XXX and the next option after "starting IP"  is "Max number of DHCP users"

If I change the router to 10.10.0.1, the subnet options remain the same, the DHCP opeions remain the same exept it is assigning 10.10.0.XXX.

If I try to change "Max number of DHCP users" to something outside the 254 range, it gives me an error and reverts my change.

[John Blakley]

When you're changing the 192.168.x.x address to 10.10.0.1, are you changing the subnet mask as well? If you're keeping it at the /24 (255.255.255.0) it won't change the dhcp scope.

[Nalta1337]

well I dont have many options when it comes to the subnetmask, I get a dropdown menu that only allows for 255.255.255.XXX

I'm wondering if I could solve this with

VLANS by segrigating each port to a different range, and becuase each port roughly corrisponds to a section of the conference center, we could roughly get 4X users?