I used to run my linux server as a router and webserver for my home network.

My old switch no longer works (lightning bolt entered the attic lol), so now I want to replace it with a wireless router I have lying around. It's a sitecom WL-341. It has like 6 utp connectors, including one for wan/modems, is 1 Gbit wired and 300mbit wireless.

I can connect the network both normally and with wireless. Linux works fine and can ping all computers. I can get internet on my linux and I use my old iptables share commands. But the other computers don't get access to the interne. It's like the wireless router doesn't allow it. I turned the firewall settings off, turned off the DHCP server on the router, but all that doesn't work. It doesn't act like my old switch.

So now I have the router connected to the internet modem and it is sharing internet fine now. Except of course the router doesn't run a webserver. I guess I can try to connect the Linux server to the internet through the router later.
But I am really wondering what problem exactly I am running into.

Not sure if I am going to give up on my webserver, replace the router with something that does allow linux routing or put the webserver behind the router.

Any ideas?

hmm, putting the webserver behind the router would be your best bet, that way you can filter anything but port 80 and 443 from reaching the server.

Does the wireless router have the option to be a gateway or a router? What's handing out dhcp addresses?

Yeah I put the router as router and the webserver behind it. With an ip forward on port 80 that is a solution to the situation.