[NTLUG:Discuss] Router Needed?

[Kenneth Loafman]

Bobby Wrenn wrote:

> Kenneth Loafman wrote:
> 
>> Stepping into the deep end here...
>>
>> What I want to do is set up a subnet here that isolates the conference 
>> room and guest work areas from the rest of the office so that folks 
>> can come in and use their laptops without being able to see the rest 
>> of the office and/or servers.  I'm guessing I'll need a router to do 
>> that isolation.  Is there a different solution short of banning 
>> laptops, or forcing them to be scanned by our non-existant IT security 
>> staff?
>>
>> If its a router solution, which one would be the easiest to set up?
>>
>> ...Thanks,
>> ...Ken
>>
> What kind of switch are you using? If your switch can do a Virtual LAN 
> (VLAN) you can split your network into as many pieces as you have ports.
> Try everyone-but-conferenceroom on 192.168.1.0. Conferenceroom on 
> 192.168.2.0. Then put printer on 192.168.0.0. The printer is visible to 
> everybody and the conferenceroom is invisible to the rest of the LAN and 
> visa versa.
> 
> There are lots of ways to slice it depending on the equipment you 
> already have and what you want to do.

I was thinking about an intelligent switch, but it seems that to supply what 
the user needs, DHCP would be needed as well.  DHCP would have to supply an 
address appropriate to the switch port and I've not seen switches that did 
DHCP along with everything else.

Been thinking more of a small Linux box with 2 NIC's per a previous 
suggestion.  Could provide DHCP, isolation, etc., and would be cheaper than 
an intelligent switch solution, with perhaps more actual control over what 
is isolated and what is visible.

There is even a VLAN compatible extension to Linux.  Still investigating.

Thanks for all the ideas so far.

...Ken