Network setup advice

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Chrisclarke

196 posts

Master Geek

#201365 15-Aug-2016 17:51

Hi,

I'm in the process of having the house renovated, and taking the opportunity to add structured wiring throughout. We own a motel, and currently have two internet connections, one serving the motel units via wifi, and another serving the house and office.

I run a media business too and move a bit of video data around on the home network, and we have kids who watch a lot of streaming TV and use online gaming a bit as well.

I'm thinking of moving to a edge router and edgeswitch combination for the house and office. Originally I had planned to leave the second internet connection on its own dedicated modem/router as it is now, connected to an outside access point for customer connections - all completely separate from the household setup.

What I'm wondering, is would it be possible to have two internet connections coming into the edge router (I have VDSL via Dratek 130, the best I can get locally), and set up a VLAN for guest access which is serviced by one internet connection, with the other (household and office) VLANS using the other internet connection. I want to keep the incoming connections separate so if guests are hammering the internet usage it won't slow the house and office down.

What would the best setup be - one router and switch, two routers and one switch, or something entirely different?

chevrolux

4962 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1612163 15-Aug-2016 19:35

Yea you have a pretty good plan there. If it is a good sized motel then having that second connection would be quite a good thing.
The edgerouter and EdgeSwitch is definitely a good combo - and there are plenty on here who will say go with it. But I would just make one small change, and say rather than the edge router go for a more expensive Mikrotik router.
You would still use dv130's to bridge the vdsl connections to the router. Then have all your lan segments as you originally planned. And finally you simply have NAT rules to send a specific lan segment out a specific wan interface.
But the biggest reason I say use Mikrotik is because of great Hotspot function. It will take care of traffic shaping so that no one particular guest can "take over" the whole connection. As well as provide an authentication mechanism for the guest network. As far as I know, the edgerouter doesn't have that function as standard.

Chrisclarke

196 posts

Master Geek

#1616440 23-Aug-2016 17:28

Thanks - I did some more research and Ubiquiti's unifi software which manages the AP's has its own Guest mode, with client isolation and full hotspot functionality, including vouchers and payment if required. Not fully installed yet but the router, switch and an AP are connected to one ISP and working perfectly. I'm now thinking of using load balancing to allow the home/office network to use motel bandwidth when available, but limiting the guests to one internet connection only so they don't slow down the home connection... just need to figure out how!