adding a router for guests

J

Jagger100

Supreme [H]ardness
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Oct 31, 2004
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I have my main wireless router which I keep locked down pretty tight. This creates a problem when people are over and would like to use WiFi. I happen to have a cheap wireless router that I could use while the guests are over. I was thinking I could plug the device's 'Internet' port into the ethernet LAN port on the back of the main router.

But I want the device to attach in two different ways and need some idea what I need to set to accomplish this.
The first and probably usual way is to give them isolated access to the internet and prevent them from accessing anything else on my network.
The second would be allow them to have access to my home network.
 
What routers do you have? Some do the isolation for you. Just need multiple SSID's.
 
My main router is a WNDR3700 NETGEAR
and the other router is a D-LINK 601 (if I recall correctly)

I like the idea of just plugging it in when guests are over and unplugging it after they are gone.
 
Plug it in to internet port, create DHCP pool that is different to your home network, NAT It to a private IP on your home network, set up firewall rule so traffic is only allowed to 192.168.1.1 or whatever your gateway is.
 
just curious, what kinda guest do you have over? The only guest I have come over are people I would trust on my network. If i dont know you enough to give you my WPA key you not commin to the house.
 
The WNDR3700 supports "guest" wireless networks, and has a checkbox on whether to allow access to local LAN devices when connected to the guest wireless network.

So if you don't need to have two separate guest wireless networks running at the same time (ie: one that can access local devices and one that cannot access local devices), then just use one of the built-in guest networks in the router and toggle the checkbox however you need at that moment in time.
 
PTNL said:
The WNDR3700 supports "guest" wireless networks, and has a checkbox on whether to allow access to local LAN devices when connected to the guest wireless network.

So if you don't need to have two separate guest wireless networks running at the same time (ie: one that can access local devices and one that cannot access local devices), then just use one of the built-in guest networks in the router and toggle the checkbox however you need at that moment in time.
Click to expand...
I tried that for a while, but there's some issues in that it shares the non-guest lower band and seems to affect my security and 'speed (g/n)' choices for the non-guest lower band.

Part of the issue is that I have some media devices with limited security options. WPA1. And my brother has different machines from time to time. I normally like to keep the system locked with MAC addresses. But I don't want to go through that everytime he comes over with something different.

And there's the appeal that its only a physical connection rather than logging into the router to setup and shutdown guest mode.
 
Don't over-complicate things then. Here's what I would do:

Configure the guest wireless router to be an access point.
-Disable DHCP so your WNDR continues to be the DHCP server
-Configure the router's IP to be in the SAME subnet as your network- E.g. if your WNDR is at 192.168.1.1, make this device 192.168.1.2
-Configure the wireless to your specifications
-Plug one of the switch ports on the old router into a switch port on the WNDR (NOT the Internet port)

This way your guests can enjoy the exact same security on your network, and you can easily plug and unplug the device as needed. If you plug the Internet port, you'll be double NATing; possibly causing performance and connection problems.
 
Protoform-X said:
Don't over-complicate things then. Here's what I would do:

Configure the guest wireless router to be an access point.
-Disable DHCP so your WNDR continues to be the DHCP server
-Configure the router's IP to be in the SAME subnet as your network- E.g. if your WNDR is at 192.168.1.1, make this device 192.168.1.2
-Configure the wireless to your specifications
-Plug one of the switch ports on the old router into a switch port on the WNDR (NOT the Internet port)

This way your guests can enjoy the exact same security on your network, and you can easily plug and unplug the device as needed. If you plug the Internet port, you'll be double NATing; possibly causing performance and connection problems.
Click to expand...
I guess this is the type of arrangement that I had in mind. The only missing part is when I want to segregate the connection from the rest of the network and let it have internet access. Maybe I can do this in the guest router itself instead of the WNDR. I got the guest router for $10-15 So its seemed like a relatively cheap option.
 
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