How to create hotel wifi subnet?

[sindyr]

A hotel room I'm in has hotel wifi (and NO wired ethernet.) I need to be able to create a network using some kind of travel router or something such that:

1) all my devices are on the same subnet via wifi and talk to each other, and
2) the travel router whatsis is getting IT'S connection to the internet from the hotel wifi.

So, for example, the travel router whatsis would be connected to the HotelWifi network, and at the same time be generating it's own network, a ThisGuys network. I hook up all my devices to the ThisGuys network which connects to the router via the room wifi, and then the router links up to the Internet via the HotelWifi. Nevertheless, the inner and outer IP ranges are different, making the room wifi I am creating it's own subnet.

Make sense?

How do I accomplish this? Is the best was to use a normal router with a wired WAN/Internet Ethernet port, and then find some device that can grab the hotel wifi and shove it into that wired port, some kind of wifi-to-wired adapter??

How do I create my OWN wifi network in the hotel room, and then plug it into the Internet through the HOTEL'S wifi??

Thanks.

 

[bill001g]

Part of the issue will be with the hotels security. They can make it very difficult to do what you want to do if they choose. They like to make lots of extra fees for every device and some will try very hard to force you to pay for each device.

There are a bunch of devices in this category called travel routers. I know asus has a few and they have modes that let you share the wireless signal. I am not real sure if they create a separate network or not.

The largest issue with actually have 2 different networks is the wireless. First you would need a device that can take wan on the wireless. If all you need is ethernet ports then that is pretty easy but when you want wireless and you want it on the same band then it gets hard since the wireless radio would need to connect to 2 different networks.

DD-WRT is your best bet if you want to do this yourself. You could connect to the hotel network via the 2.4g radio as the wan and then run the 5g radio and eithernet as LAN. You can define multiple vlans on the 2.4g radio but I do not know if you can run vlan as a wan ..ie client mode and the other vlan as a AP

With 2 devices one acting as a wireless to ethernet converter (ie a client-bridge) and then a standard router would work but carrying 2 devices is likely not what you are looking for.

Most these will work with most hotels authorization systems because they are pretty stupid and as long as the traffic comes from the same mac they are happy. Luckily they can't do it like a corporation does and run 802.1x which you would not be able to get around....they would get huge push back from customers wanting to use device like game consoles that do not support 802.1x.

 

[sindyr]

I'm not sure I follow all that, could anyone give some specific examples?

 

[bill001g]

This is a asus product that can do some of what you want but I do not know if can actually run subnets.

http://www.asus.com/us/Networking/WL330N/

What you want is a very advanced thing it is not something simple you can just click a few boxes and get it to work you must really understand how what you are doing. It is more a feature of a commercial router and those tend to be to expensive for most individuals. This leaves you with third party firmware like dd-wrt which is free but take quite a bit of study to be able to use effectively.

 

[sindyr]

What if I used 2 devices, one to be a normal router, and the other to transform the hotel wifi signal to ethernet? In other words, can I get a standalone device that has an antenna, and outputs a wired signal from the hotel wifi? Sort of an adapter that when you plug the ethernet wire in, you're really plugging into wifi.

If such a device exists, I could use it and plug it into the WAN port of my standard router, and that should do the trick.

Does it exist?

EDIT: Maybe something like *this*:
http://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-Universal-Ethernet-Adapter-GWU627/dp/B004UAKCS6
... in concert with a standard router? The IOGEAR feeds the hotel wifi into the WAN port of the router, the router takes it and creates a separate wifi subnet?

 

[bill001g]

That would work in most cases. That devices is called a client bridge. I am not familiar with that particular model I use mostly outdoor ones like engenious enh202 but it is much more expensive than the one you have linked.

 

[sindyr]

I **just** stumbled across this - is this the answer to the whole shebang?

Thanks.

http://netgear.com/home/products/networking/wifi-routers/PR2000.aspx#tab-techspecs

 

[bill001g]

Maybe but it would take digging though the specs. The hardest issue is receiving the internet (ie WAN) via wifi and then providing LAN on the same WiFi. It is pretty easy to run it as a repeater where it is all one network. It is also very easy to run the wan as wireless and the lan on the ethernet.

Running 2 different networks on the same radio is the main question.