Poor Man's unmanaged, home, segmented, Network 1

[UnclScott]

Hello everyone,

I'm going to be setting up my mom's home network. My plan is to configure everything, label it, and then ship it off to her. She rents rooms and there are devices which require internet access ( solar, fridge, IoT devices ). At one point, there were 60 devices connected ( printers, cell phones, tablets, laptops, chromecast, old guests, etc ) and the poor service provided router/modem couldn't handle the connections. I can foresee times where I'm going to need to tell her to press the reset button on routers. So I'm wondering about the easiest setup and management; recommended practices.

I was thinking of two networks. One, her personal, and the other guests/housemates. I think I need 3 routers, but maybe 4. The routers would be ones made for home; not business class.

My plan is the following:

Modem -> Main Router ( wired only )
Main Router Splits to Two Routers: WiFi Home and WiFi Guest/Housemate
Possibly, Main Router would have a 3rd connection to Router-IoTs.

Home - family pcs, tablets, dvd/smart tvs, cell phones, printers, file server ( USB to router, maybe networked )
Guest - all wifi, no wired connections.
IoT - Solar, Fridge, whatever other devices exist

For the Main, Home, and Guest, each would be connected via the Internet Port, and have DHCP enabled. The last step would be power timers to shutdown the Modem, Main, Home, and Guest routers routinely. Then power back on a few minutes after the previous power on.

Q1: For Home and Guest, should I set both up as 40MHz N only? I'm hoping these two routers will be far from each other. I believe, she will be the one with access to the ISP modem, main and home routers. The Guest would be in a more public spot.

Q2: For IoT I can go with 20 MHz G only? How much more interference would this cause? Do these devices need to have access to the home network? Is this needed?

My urge is to further segment the home into wi-fi and wired, but that might be too much. I know she can understand, give guests this password, only family gets this password, and cable-repair/solar/fridge/repair person the IoTs this password.

Q3: Am I missing anything?

Thank you for your help and thoughts.

 

[goombawaho]

Way too complicated and shouldn't be using routers.
Why not just use ACCESS POINTS and one router. Then create a second SSID and turn on Access Point isolation if you don't want devices to see each other. Multiple ROUTERS in such a small environment is NOT the correct way to set things up. It creates all kinds of routing issues and firewall issues if you ARE connecting from LAN port on one router to the WAN port on another router.

Should just be:
MODEM > ROUTER > SWITCH (if needed) > As many access points as needed.
Wired devices connected directly to switch

Access Point SSID/settings
HOME access point isolation NOT enabled
GUEST all wifi, no wired connections includes IoT devices, access point isolation enabled

Note: An actual predefined GUEST network may enable AP Isolation without any other setting.

Like this except different SSIDs.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[UnclScott]

Heya, Thank you for the response

And ahh yes - access points, and thank you for solving my IoT connection too This felt too complicated... and I couldn't figure out what to do with those devices. And yes, I was thinking of using the WAN for the Home and Guest, to keep them separate - so I do like the access point much much better. I don't like/trust the idea of the one device for the modem + router + wired + wifi + wifi_guest.

Thank you. Thank seems perfect.

 

[edfair]

You could use routers as access points/switches. Would accomplish the same with some additional functionality. Nothing plugged into the WAN ports.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[goombawaho]

Yeah, you don't have to buy access points. If you turn the DHCP off on the secondary "routers" (very important) and plug one of the LAN ports into the LAN port of the main router, you have an access point!!! Set a static IP address on each router to be used as an access point. This assumes you can run a cable to the secondary routers.

For example. Main router
192.168.1.1
255.255.255.0

Access Points
192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.3
255.255.255.0
Gateway 192.168.1.1

One drawback is that IF people have physical access to the secondary routers, they can plug into the LAN port and have access to anything on the network (open shares, printers). Access Points are better that way - you mount them on the ceiling and not much anyone can mess with. Note that there are client roaming issues when you set things up this way. Some devices may connect to a far away access point rather than a closer one. Newer, more expensive products have features that push clients to different access points based on location/signal strength. But the above is a poor man's solution - no offense. You get what you get.

I use these for "cheaper" access points. Ubiquiti Unifi AP-LR

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=0ED-0005-00063

They're only wireless G but they go a long way. If you don't need huge bandwidth, they are great.


"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[goombawaho]

Forgot - for remote power management (reboot capability), these are great. WATTBOX IP. You can login to a web page and kill the power to an outlet to reboot a specific device. You can do it for your mom without ever leaving your chair. Not cheap, but killer control. You can even have the device reboot specific outlets if a ping to google.com starts to fail, meaning loss of internet connectivity.

Link

Here's a screen shot of one of my customers when you log into the web interface.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.