Network design for Home network

[RustyRails]

Hi

Am shifting houses from one with a 100Mb FIOS fiber connection where bandwidth was plentiful to one where I only have DSL (~5Mb down, 0.5Mb up) available.

We have three people in the house all of who use Internet heavily for things like video calling, online gaming, VPN access for home offices, plus normal home activities like security system, DVR, VOIP phones, etc.

In the short term I have put in multiple DSL's -- one for each home office, and one for the house overall. This way I can guarantee certain internet bandwidth to each home office

At the moment I simply have three separated LANs. But that means printers, NAS, and similar cannot be shared. And wireless devices (iPad, Android phones) have to keep changing Access Points depending on need.

each LAN is a different Subnet.

It's been a while since I've have done router design. I am thinking I can simply merge the LANs in a single LAN to reduce cabling, and keep the three subnets, so that each subnet has it's own DSL router. Based on IP address, the each device will route out to the internet correctly. I think that would help my cabling and preserve my "dedicated" abndwidth. But still not sure how exactly how to handle the routing between in home subnets. Am thinking I need a small LAN only router. But getting out of my depth.

I'd appreciate any suggestions, etc. Even recommended readings if this covered somewhere...

Thanks in advance

 

[abailey]

Hi

Am shifting houses from one with a 100Mb FIOS fiber connection where bandwidth was plentiful to one where I only have DSL (~5Mb down, 0.5Mb up) available.

We have three people in the house all of who use Internet heavily for things like video calling, online gaming, VPN access for home offices, plus normal home activities like security system, DVR, VOIP phones, etc.

In the short term I have put in multiple DSL's -- one for each home office, and one for the house overall. This way I can guarantee certain internet bandwidth to each home office

At the moment I simply have three separated LANs. But that means printers, NAS, and similar cannot be shared. And wireless devices (iPad, Android phones) have to keep changing Access Points depending on need.

each LAN is a different Subnet.

It's been a while since I've have done router design. I am thinking I can simply merge the LANs in a single LAN to reduce cabling, and keep the three subnets, so that each subnet has it's own DSL router. Based on IP address, the each device will route out to the internet correctly. I think that would help my cabling and preserve my "dedicated" abndwidth. But still not sure how exactly how to handle the routing between in home subnets. Am thinking I need a small LAN only router. But getting out of my depth.

I'd appreciate any suggestions, etc. Even recommended readings if this covered somewhere...

Thanks in advance

You can run the three subnets over the same physical LAN if you want but you will need to run VLAN's. To do this you will need a managed (or "smart") switch that you can setup VLAN's on. If you want the different subnets to talk to each other you will need a small router like you mentioned.
Another way would be to get a router that you can connect all the DSL lines to and it can load balance the traffic over a single subnet. Then on top of that you could set up rules to allow for certain devices to have priority. This can get complicated though.

 

[Dreamslacker]

You can do so without VLANs provided you assign static IPs to all the devices that need to go out a specific link.

First thing you need to do is to disable DHCP server on all except one of the routers. The router with DHCP turned on will be the 'common' or generic access link (probably the one for home use).

Then make sure all your routers have the same LAN subnet but different IP addresses.

E.g.
Home router - 192.168.1.1/ 24 (255.255.255.0) - DHCP server enabled 192.168.1.100 - 200
Office1 router - 192.168.1.2/ 24
Office2 router - 192.168.1.3/ 24
Office3 router - 192.168.1.4/ 24

For equipment in office1, you need to set their static IP manually and set the gateway & dns IP to 192.168.1.2.
Likewise for office2 and office3.

Link all the routers LAN together. i.e. one cable from home router to office1, another from office1 to office2 router etc. Alternatively, simply hook up all 4 routers LAN to a common switch.

By having a specific gateway set per device, you can control which router it uses for internet bound traffic. All your LAN traffic rides locally on switches/ bridges so they won't hit any of the routers anyway.

Any devices that connect by DHCP will be assigned to use the home router as default gateway so your offices will still have "dedicated" bandwidth.

Since all your routers on LAN and all the devices are in the same subnet, you can pool your networked resources together.