Making LAN private from flatmates

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donaldjboyer

17 posts

Geek

#185885 8-Dec-2015 21:58

Hello,

We have just moved into a flat under a house, and the WIFI is shared with the main house upstairs.

We have a couple of Windows laptops, and a Macbook Air, and also a PLEX server.

I'd like to keep our PC's private from other users on the LAN. How do I best go about this? Start by changing the Windows Workgroup name to something obscure, but what else? I have access to the router settings.

Thanks in advance.

Donald

ech3lon

369 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#1443183 8-Dec-2015 22:29

I can think of a couple different things, easiest is if your wireless router have "guest" settings, which should have AP isolation which prevents them accessing your Intranet.

chevrolux

4962 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1443187 8-Dec-2015 22:38

To do it properly you need to use VLANs.

So the router will just have two VLANs with different subnets for each. But just simply nat'd out the same public IP. Then just some basic firewall rules to block traffic between lan segments and you are good to go.
You then just create two SSIDs and add them to their respective VLAN.

Obviously the router needs to be able to support such a configuration - most consumer junk won't. Mikrotik would be my pick.

The problem with using any sort of 'guest' functions are that they should isolate clients as well meaning your plex server won't work too well. Please note I used the word 'should' as not all router will isolate lan clients in 'guest mode'

yitz

2080 posts

Uber Geek

#1443188 8-Dec-2015 22:40

AP client isolation typically blocks traffic between wireless clients only, all wireless clients can still access services on the wired LAN.

UHD

655 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1443235 9-Dec-2015 01:19

Turn off file/printer sharing in the notebooks and make the Plex server require account log in.

cws82us

788 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1443242 9-Dec-2015 04:56

DD-WRT router will do the job.

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