Isolate WLAN from LAN

[biznetplus]

I have 5 office machines on a network, I want to add a public wireless hotspot without the public being able to see my shared folders and such on the office machines. What is the best way to accomplish this??

My first try was this:

Statically assign IPs 192.168.1.2 - 192.168.1.7 for the office machines.

Have the router assign 192.168.1.10 - 192.168.1.254 through DHCP to the wireless clients.

Block ports 137-139, 445 on the 192.168.1.10 - 192.168.1.254 range.

This did not seem to work. I read about some third party firmware for routers that would allow me to set it up, but it seems like I am overlooking something much simpler.

The router was whatever Netgear wireless G piece of crap currently sold at Radio Shack.

/first post, glad to find a good tech forum for free!

[johnwill]

In truth, the way I recommend is with two routers.

Connect the primary router directly to the ISP modem, and use it's wireless to share the wireless to the public.

Configure the second router with a static WAN address outside the range of the DHCP server of the primary router, but in the same subnet. Configure this static address to be in the DMZ of the primary router. Make sure that the base address of the secondary router is in a different subnet than the primary router. If the primary router is 192.168.1.1, I'd make the secondary router 192.168.2.1 for instance.

Connect all your private connections, either wired or wireless, to the secondary router. This puts the router's NAT layer firewall between you and the public access, and none of your computers will be visible to them in any way.

[biznetplus]

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for. I will try that out tomorrow.

[johnwill]

Should work, I've used it in a number of locations, including my "public" wireless access router.

[biznetplus]

Flawless Victory!

Thanks John :)

[johnwill]

You are most welcome. Come back again.