Wired network with a wireless hotspot - How to?

[joegti10]

I have a web design client that owns an auto repair business. He has a wired network running the computers in his shop from a simple old wired router connected to a broadband modem.

He wants to keep the wired network as is but add wi-fi accessibility to the waiting area where his customers wait to get their cars fixed.

Whats the best way to go about doing this? My main concern is so that the people in the waiting room or some guy out in the street are not accessing the businesses networked computers, files etc. They would get internet access only.

Tips and advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[joelm3103]

See if this article helps: Create a Wireless Internet Hotspot at Home in 10 Minutes for FREE | Raymond.CC Blog.

Also you would need a wireless router or WIFI card to make this possible.

 

[Win2kpatcher]

Hello! It sounds like the goal here is to establish an easy wifi connection for the customers yet protecting the sensitive data. Would you keep this wifi connection wide open or do you want to lock it down with some security and encryption and such? In which case the customers who wish to use the wifi connection would have to come ask the front desk or cashier for the "WPA2" passphrase key. Either way I would simply reccomend purchasing an actual wifi router and not just an access point so that you can put these on two seperate networks. This way your bussines network is lets say 192.168.1.xxx and the wifi public network would be on 192.168.0.xxx which would prevent customers from easily accessing the business network.

As for the actual setup it is pretty straight foward...are you familiar with settings up routers at all? You are basically going to leave your wired setup as is and run a ethernet cable from an open port on your wired router to your wifi routers WAN/INTERNET port which should pickup the internet connection ok. I have never had any issues setting up multiple home/small business routers this way...now enterprise level cisco routers...that is a differnt story..haha. Doing it this way would allow you to have the two seperate networks both running there own DHCP server and configurations.

 

[joelm3103]

Not sure if this thread is solved but just thought I'd pitch in something Osiris posted earlier.

http://www.techist.com/forums/f27/virtual-router-236280/