Network infrastructure setup help

[MyndFyre]

I just bought a house (closing in < 2 weeks!) and want to set up a better network than I have right now.  Having never wired a house or anything substantial for internet, I'd like some validation on what I'm planning. 

I've done some math and figured out that there would be 7 ports throughout the house that I'd want to set up:
* 1 in each of 3 bedrooms
* 1 in an outside "bonus" room
* 1 in a living area
* 2 in a common area - 1 for the Xbox and 1 for general use (like a desk)

I currently have a 4-port Linksys wireless N router, but I don't believe I want to use this as a primary router for a couple reasons:
* I want to install the networking hub in my utility room inside of cabinets.  This would put the wireless signal coming from a non-central part of the house, AND it would be close to electronics that could disrupt it, specifically, the washer/dryer.
* It only has 4 ports; to get this setup I'd need at least 7.

I still want people plugging into wired networking to get a dynamic IP address unless otherwise configured, so here's the final setup I've come up with:

Cable company -> Cable modem -> Wired router -> 8-port switch

The switch has cabling to each room connected to it and is the central point.  However, with an 8-port switch I'm not able to connect any additional devices (7 rooms plus connection to the router).  The connection to the Xbox will then go through my wireless-N router which will be configured as a gateway (so DHCP functions are disabled).  All DHCP assignment should be handled through the main wired router.

Ultimately, connections might look like this:

* Cable company -> Modem -> Wired router -> Switch -> PC
* Cable company -> Modem -> Wired router -> Switch -> Wireless Router -> Wireless Network -> PC
* Cable company -> Modem -> Wired router -> Switch -> Wireless Router -> Wired port -> Xbox

Is this correct?

[Newby]

Two questions:

1. Is the XBox plugged into a wired port on the wireless router? If so, is it going to be able to access the rest of your network? I've had problems where wireless routers pretty much have to do NAT -- they won't act like switches no matter how hard you try.
2. Is your wireless network going to talk with your wired network? My dad has it set up where the wireless networks are on a 192.168.1.x subnet, and wired connections are on their own network. I have them on the same subnet.

As an aside, it wouldn't hurt to buy a 16-port switch if you feel you'll be adding onto your network at any time. I bought a 5-port switch when I thought I would only need 2 or 3 of the ports, and I ended up with two 5-port switches attached to each other, both completely full..

But yes, basically: Cable Modem -> Wired Router -> [whatever you really want to do]. Wired router should have two different IPs (one is the IP your ISP will serve you, the other is your own internal LAN IP) and should do NAT.

What I personally do is: Cable Modem -> Wired Router -> Switch -> rest of house, which is wired and eventually runs back into the switch.

I also recommend setting up an older PC as your wired router, using an operating system like FreeBSD. It gives a lot more flexibility. You can also set up a wireless network on it too, if you so desire. You could even give ISA a try; my dad runs it and loves it. I prefer FreeBSD and pf as my gateway/NAT/firewall/router system, though.

[sdfg]

my dad runs it and loves it.

Wow, my dad doesn't know how to turn on a computer !
L33T must run in the family...

[iago]

1. Is the XBox plugged into a wired port on the wireless router? If so, is it going to be able to access the rest of your network? I've had problems where wireless routers pretty much have to do NAT -- they won't act like switches no matter how hard you try.

My Linksys WRT54g (pretty standard) works fine as a switch. As long as devices on the network can talk to each other, there's no reason it shouldn't. Just don't use the uplink port.


As a general comment (on this thread), it really depends what you're going for. If you just want all your computers to talk, then yeah, a switch + wireless router in some combination is all you need. If you want to run servers or run a secure portion, then things get a little more tricky.

[MyndFyre]

@Newby: Yes, the plan is to have everything on the same subnet talking to each other.  What's tricky?

[Camel]

I've had problems where wireless routers pretty much have to do NAT -- they won't act like switches no matter how hard you try.

Linksys routers are unilaterally exempt from this problem. They have an option to isolate the wireless network, but it is disabled by the default settings. The switch in all linsys routers are physically independent from the CPU and the WAN port; even if you fry the CPU, the switch will still work (NAT/DHCP/etc will not; that's done by iptables/dhcpd in CPU land). Some of the linksys N routers have a second CPU (and separate OS!) for the radio (my 350N does; the 54G does not), but I'm not clear on how that CPU is physically connected to the main CPU and switch.

[edit] @MF: your setup sounds fine to me; what ISP are you going for? I just got FiOS, and they gave me a retarded modem/router combo which has ridiculous security restraints on it, and the default WEP key is the BSSID.

[Newby]

@Newby: Yes, the plan is to have everything on the same subnet talking to each other.  What's tricky?

If you're plugging your XBox into a wireless router (emphasis on router) it may not work that way.

For instance: your network is 192.168.1.xxx. Your wireless router's IP is 192.168.1.200. Your XBox's IP is whatever the LAN side of that wireless router is, so the rest of your network interfaces with the XBox via 192.168.1.200. And any computers on your wireless network talk to the wireless computers via 192.168.1.200.

But I honestly haven't dealt with much in the way of wireless routers recently. I just remember, from my limited experience, that's how they worked. Sure, those on the LAN side of the wireless router will have no issues talking to your 192.168.1.xxx computers, but those computers won't be able to talk directly to wireless computers/the xbox without some port forwarding on the router side. That's part of the main reason I set up a wireless network on my router (the one right after Cable Modem) so that I could guarantee they were both on the 192.168.1.xxx subnet.

[Camel]

If you're plugging your XBox into a wireless router (emphasis on router) it may not work that way.

For instance: your network is 192.168.1.xxx. Your wireless router's IP is 192.168.1.200. Your XBox's IP is whatever the LAN side of that wireless router is, so the rest of your network interfaces with the XBox via 192.168.1.200. And any computers on your wireless network talk to the wireless computers via 192.168.1.200.

No. The router's IP address exists to provide a gateway and a web-based configuration tool; it is a completely independent computer which is connected to the switch. If you wish to reach the internet via NAT, you go through the gateway. If you wish to speak to other computers on the network, you needn't communicate with the gateway -- and the switch won't even forward traffic to it.


[edit] Technically speaking, calling a wireless router a 'router' is imprecise; it's a router, AP, and switch. These are (or, at least, could be) three physically distinct entities. The router has an input and an output; the WAN and the LAN connections. The LAN connection is hardwired in to the switch, and the WAN connects to your modem. The AP is another independent thing (though it's usually piggybacked in to the router's CPU, and shares a LAN connection to the switch -- it needn't necessarily be that way) which bridges the LAN in to the radio network -- but do not be confused, the AP does not have an IP address; it's just the wireless equivalent of a switch.

Bringing down the router's LAN interface will not disable the radio, and it will not disable the switch. The web configuration utility on the router will be unreachable, but the radio will still bridge network traffic (unless it's sharing the router's ethernet port, which is often the case). If the router is running a DHCP server, that will be unreachable, but this does not mean that the LAN is down.

[Blaze]

I've never had an issue using a Linksys router as a switch, either, iago.

[MyndFyre]

@Camel: So I should not connect the wall switch to the wireless router via the special port?

[Camel]

@Camel: So I should not connect the wall switch to the wireless router via the special port?

Do you mean the WAN port? The question only seems to make sense if you've got two routers (one non-wifi router on the modem, and another wifi AP). That would create a secondary (wireless) LAN inside of your primary (wired) LAN using NAT. That would prevent your wireless clients from appearing in your primary LAN, and I don't think that's what you want.

Since that doesn't even sound like your scenario (you have one switch and one wifi router, right?), I'm going to assume I didn't understand the question. Just plug your switch in to the LAN ports of your router, which will simply increase the number of wired ports available to your LAN. Use a gigabit link between the two if possible (100mbit switches sometimes come with 2 1gbit ports, allowing you to daisy-chain them without creating a massive bottleneck).

[MyndFyre]

No, I'm going to have two routers:

* Router 1 will be my primary firewall and will live between the cable modem and the switch.  This will be a wired-only router.
* Router 2 will be a Wireless router that I already have, a Linksys WRT300N. 

I don't want the wireless to be on a separate network using NAT from my main wired network.  I want them all to be together on a single subnet.

To answer your question from earlier, I currently have Cox internet and plan on keeping them.  15mbps I think is what I get right now.

[Chavo]

You will want to setup Router 2 as an Access Point (Wireless Gateway) to ensure the NAT and DHCP functions are disabled.  I'm honestly not sure if the wired ports will still work in that mode because I've never had any desire to use this configuration, but they probably will.  I'm not sure if your Linksys router will have an easy option to switch to this configuration, but my WRT54G does and you could always install DDWRT or Tomato (assuming it is compatible). Your configuration may work with just the DHCP/NAT functions disabled on the wireless router, but I have no idea how the router would handle wireless connections with those turned off unless it is in Access Point mode.

[iago]

On a WRT54g, you have to turn off the DHCP but NAT doesn't matter. If you plug everything into the switched ports and ignore the uplink ("wan") port, you should be good to go. As long as the switched ports/wireless ports can talk to each other, and your actual gateway is plugged into one of them, then there's no reason you wouldn't be able to use your actual gateway.

[Camel]

Why do you want to use two routers, anyways? Personally, I'd just use the 300N - it's a badass router! I've got a 350N, because I wanted to run DD-WRT extreme. That said, there's no reason you can't do what you described - just turn off DHCP on the 300N and don't use its WAN port.

@Chavo, Linksys firmware doesn't even have a special "gateway" mode as some do -- probably because such a mode doesn't really do anything, anyways (it's just a preset).

[edit] Be wary of firmware modification of any kind -- the 3xxN series have a really cheap flash chip that has severe hysteresis. I had to flash my 350N 3 times before it would boot DD-WRT. The bootloader has a TFTP server that will write to flash, so you can't really brick them, but getting it in to that mode is a bit of an ordeal.