RadicalDad
New Around Here
My home needs 3 wireless router locations to cover it well. There is wired Ethernet to these locations. I've started working out of my home, and we often host guests, which means It would be smart to isolate my network from the guest network. I can do this with 7 routers, but that seems silly.
Lets say I put router 1 at the cable modem and treat it as a perimeter router. It has no wireless. Now I cascade two chains of wireless routers off the perimeter router, one chain of 3 routers (numbers 2, 3, and 4) for my secure network, a second chain of 3 routers (numbers 5, 6, and 7) for the guest network. I had the foresight to pull two Cat 6 wires to each location, so I can physically do this, and I've got a bunch of old WRT54G routers to do it with, but I'm going to run out of wireless frequencies before I'm done, not to mention annoy the neighbors by using up all the available frequencies.
Modern routers, such as the Linksys E4200, come with a guest network which works on the same radio frequency - perfect! - but it won't work on cascaded routers. The guest network IPs are simply routed out the WAN port without being able to touch the LAN ports or other wireless clients. If you cascade out the WAN port, you've lost your security one level up. If you cascade out the LAN port, you must turn off DHCP, losing the guest network ability (which is also lost because the WAN port isn't connected). If you don't cascade the three E4200's but instead connect them (via the WAN ports) directly to the perimeter router's LAN ports, you lose the ability for devices on my secure side network to talk to each other due to the different subnets.
Or do you? It seems that this entire problem could be solved by static routing, but so far my efforts haven't gone anywhere. Assume for discussion that Router one is at 192.168.1.1, Router 2 is at 192.168.2.1, etc. What do I put in the Static Routing entry on the Advance Routing tab? I've searched in vain for anything that even approaches a tutorial or explanation of the Linksys implementation.
(And if I link the main addresses of the routers with static routes, do the guest networks, which each router forces to 192.168.33.0, remain secure and isolated? I'm happy to experiment and report back if someone will help me with the static route part. I've already got a pair of E4200's to test with.)
Thanks!
Lets say I put router 1 at the cable modem and treat it as a perimeter router. It has no wireless. Now I cascade two chains of wireless routers off the perimeter router, one chain of 3 routers (numbers 2, 3, and 4) for my secure network, a second chain of 3 routers (numbers 5, 6, and 7) for the guest network. I had the foresight to pull two Cat 6 wires to each location, so I can physically do this, and I've got a bunch of old WRT54G routers to do it with, but I'm going to run out of wireless frequencies before I'm done, not to mention annoy the neighbors by using up all the available frequencies.
Modern routers, such as the Linksys E4200, come with a guest network which works on the same radio frequency - perfect! - but it won't work on cascaded routers. The guest network IPs are simply routed out the WAN port without being able to touch the LAN ports or other wireless clients. If you cascade out the WAN port, you've lost your security one level up. If you cascade out the LAN port, you must turn off DHCP, losing the guest network ability (which is also lost because the WAN port isn't connected). If you don't cascade the three E4200's but instead connect them (via the WAN ports) directly to the perimeter router's LAN ports, you lose the ability for devices on my secure side network to talk to each other due to the different subnets.
Or do you? It seems that this entire problem could be solved by static routing, but so far my efforts haven't gone anywhere. Assume for discussion that Router one is at 192.168.1.1, Router 2 is at 192.168.2.1, etc. What do I put in the Static Routing entry on the Advance Routing tab? I've searched in vain for anything that even approaches a tutorial or explanation of the Linksys implementation.
(And if I link the main addresses of the routers with static routes, do the guest networks, which each router forces to 192.168.33.0, remain secure and isolated? I'm happy to experiment and report back if someone will help me with the static route part. I've already got a pair of E4200's to test with.)
Thanks!