Daisy Chain Routers

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What Does Daisy Chain Routers Mean?

Daisy chain routers are routers that have been connected in a cascading manner, in sequence or a ring, either to extend the number of computers that can be connected via wires to the local area network or to add wireless capabilities to a network.

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The idea is to connect one router as an extension of a main router, either as a port extender or a signal extender, forming a WiFi extender daisy chain. The term “daisy chain” comes from the garland created by connecting daisies to each other to form a chain.

Techopedia Explains Daisy Chain Routers

Daisy chain routers are two or more routers connected to each other where each router between the ends is connected to exactly two other routers, with the terminal routers connected to only one router. In a linear topology network, there is a two-way link between one node and the next. If the two ends are connected, then it becomes a ring network.

The purpose of a daisy chain is to extend the number of computers that can be connected to the network, but only one router is acting as the main router and DHCP server; all other routers are simply there to connect the other computers. Another purpose is to add a wireless access point to a wired network. The wireless router or access point is daisy chained to the main router, but its DHCP-serving capabilities should be turned off in order to avoid IP address conflicts.

The DHCP server capabilities of the other routers can be turned on, but the resulting configuration would be more complicated since each router would tantamount to a separate local network, so it would take additional special configuration for computers connected to different routers to communicate with each other.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.