[SOLVED] Dual IP address ranges on same network ?

[Camperdownfamily]

I have a questions which I can't seem to find any information about in the internet.

I have a network which has wired and wireless elements which uses the 192.168.1.x address range and I also have some wireless home control devices which use the 172.16.x.x range and are only connected to each wirelessly and are not interfaced with the 192.168.1.x network.

I have commercial network switches and wireless access points which support multiple VLANs.

My problem is that I want to add a couple of home control devices which are out of reach of the range of the 172.16.x.x network, but are within the range of the 192.168.1.x network. Is there any way for the 172.16.x.x devices to connect to each other via the 192.168.1.x network hardware (just using it as a bridge) without needing to interface with anything on that network ?

In other words, rather than having multiple subnets within the same IP range, can two completely separate IP ranges operate across the same network in parallel without interfering with each other - and if so, how?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[bill001g]

It all depends on the equipment you have. Lets say you have a bunch of access points and you have ssid1, ssid2, ssid3 on all of them. So if you were using consumer AP everything would be on one network. With a commercial AP you can assign each SSID to a different VLAN. You would then connect these AP to a common switch and use vlan tags to allow all three vlans to share the ethernet cable and the switch. From the viewpoint of the end equipment this would be like you have 3 completely seperate AP with 1 SSID each. They would think they have their own ethernet cable and their own switch. Just as if you had actually separate equipment no traffic can go between the networks, assuming you did not make any mistakes in the configuration.

 

[Camperdownfamily]

I have Zyxel NWA5123-NI wireless access points managed by a Zyxel NXC2500 and I have a Gigabit GS748TP PoE switch.

At the moment the DHCP is on my domestic router, but I can switch that off and move it to the switch or NXC2500.

I live in an old building which I extensively renovated a decade ago and aimed to future proof when I was rewiring it by including Cat 6 networking throughout. The big problem is that the internal walls are thick and wireless signals don't travel far - hence the reason for using the Zyxel system.

I have limited networking experience so have kept things simple up to now, but wanting to improve energy efficiency by connecting some more things around the house to be centrally controlled has raised this dilemma.

I have found guides online for setting up multiple VLANs but they all use e.g. 192.168.1.x for VLAN1, 182.168.2.x for VLAN2 etc. ( or something similar) so I wasn't clear if that is just because it's easier to illustrate or if there is a rule which required all the VLANs withing a physical network to be sub sets of the same higher level IP range of not.

It sounds like you are saying it does not - which would be ideal for what I am looking to do.

 

[bill001g]

Very technically a vlan does not even need IP addresses if you have the correct application. You can of course use any address in the private range. You can also get away with using the blocks of public IP for any site you will never visit. IP blocks allocated to the military in various countries are one people tend to use since most these are reserved on the internet but not used for public access.

Partially your problem is the example you see are for consumer grade equipment. There are many consumer routers that only support the 192.168.x.x private IP. It is much more common to use 10.x.x.x in commercial equipment but commercial equipment does not limit you. They assume you know what you are doing.