Question Isolating devices in a rented office ?

delon99

Reputable
Mar 26, 2019
5
0
4,510
Hi,

I have recently rented an available room in a small office (I am a freelancer and working from home got boring). I have no business with them, I just pay the rent. It's in an older building so no cabling is available. I connected to their wifi router using my wifi expander that is then connected to my TL-SG108E switch with a LAN cable so I can share the net with my own devices (a couple of PC's and laptops) from a single spot. Not a stellar setup but it works fine for me, although I would like it to be secured so no one from the office (let alone their guests who might have connected to their wifi) could access my devices but I, of course, want to access the internet.

I did try to search for answers on the net, I watched YT videos and read tutorials but I think I was born with inhibitors that completely block any knowledge regarding networking to be perceived. If you are so kind and try to educate me please explain it in baby steps so my peanut brain can process it.

Thanks!
 

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Hi,

I have recently rented an available room in a small office (I am a freelancer and working from home got boring). I have no business with them, I just pay the rent. It's in an older building so no cabling is available. I connected to their wifi router using my wifi expander that is then connected to my TL-SG108E switch with a LAN cable so I can share the net with my own devices (a couple of PC's and laptops) from a single spot. Not a stellar setup but it works fine for me, although I would like it to be secured so no one from the office (let alone their guests who might have connected to their wifi) could access my devices but I, of course, want to access the internet.

I did try to search for answers on the net, I watched YT videos and read tutorials but I think I was born with inhibitors that completely block any knowledge regarding networking to be perceived. If you are so kind and try to educate me please explain it in baby steps so peanut brain can process it.

Thanks!
The simplest thing is to replace your SG108 switch with a standard WIFI router. Connect the cable from your WIFI bridge to the WAN port on the router. The LAN ports will treat the input as "the internet". You will have the same protection you have when at home. The only gotcha possible is if the IP range on the LAN is the same as the IP range you get on the WAN. You can change the IP address range on the LAN to be unique.
 
  • Like
Reactions: delon99

delon99

Reputable
Mar 26, 2019
5
0
4,510
Thanks! Um, that sounds embarrassingly simple :) I was thinking in VLAN's but they are rather for creating subnets within my own network, aren't they? I'll try your solution. Shall I define an IP pool range beforehand or only if I experience IP conflicts with the WAN?
 
You might as well just change it if you are comfortable doing it. Although it depends on the router what happens is you get a error message in the router when you plug the wan port in if they are the same. You can use one of the private ranges that are almost never used on home routers like
172.18.1.1 with the standard 255.255.255.0 mask.
 
  • Like
Reactions: delon99