Question Multiple Residences

[LyndaJacobsen]

Please excuse typos - trying to type this on my phone:

We live on a property that has a Main House, Guest House, Pool House, and a Studio.

Comcast has a modem in our basement that connects to a router and there are 4 lines that go from the router to each residence. Each residence has it's own router. All residents use the same user ID and Password to access a WiFi connection on our cell phones. I live in the Main House and am the only person with a PC. One resident has a laptop and the other resident only uses two cell phones.

We have the newest router from Comcast.

Do you have any suggestions that would allow all residents to have a better WiFi connection?se our mobile phones

The Guest House residents complain that their WiFi/Wireless connection keeps dropping and they have to constantly reset their devices.

Would a router booster help? Should a booster be placed in each residence?

 

[digitalgriffin]

First off anything supplied by the cable company is garbage. If you using it for internet only, buy your own cable modem and a quality router.

That said you should put an ACCESS POINT in each guest house if it's prewired already to each guest house. Not a router. Having a router on top of a router will cause connection issues if the DHCP is on and it's in router mode. Give each guest house it's own SSID and Unique Password.

I don't know about you, but I would ALWAYS isolate networks like that. Many quality routers & AP's have a guest network provision. You don't know who's breaking the law or doing something illegal. But you could be in some deep legal if it happens over your portion of the network.

Giving them a guest network won't stop the police or a subpoena from showing up on your door. But it will make it easier to prove it wasn't yours. Also it prevents your "guest" from spying on your traffic. I could use wireshark or any number of other utilities and see everything you are doing and where you are going. That is just asking for trouble. A guest net would isolate your traffic from theirs.

Furthermore I would use a DPI firewall with a plug in that restricts access to adult portals and reports back unclassified portals they are attending, or uses of software like TOR to go to the dark web. That will grab the attention of FBI/CIA/NSA real quick. If you go apply for a gov't job that requires a security clearance, that might raise some eyebrows. pfSense is among the best, and it's open source so you can run it on any reasonably dated hardware. But it has a learning curve.

 

[USAFRet]

Comcast has a modem in our basement that connects to a router

Do you have any suggestions that would allow all residents to have a better WiFi connection?

The basement is the absolute worst place to propagate a WiFi signal. Even for a single building.

But all these sub connections need to be isolated. I really wouldn't my traffic mixed in with someone I am not closely related to.

 

[hang-the-9]

Please excuse typos - trying to type this on my phone:

We live on a property that has a Main House, Guest House, Pool House, and a Studio.

Comcast has a modem in our basement that connects to a router and there are 4 lines that go from the router to each residence. Each residence has it's own router. All residents use the same user ID and Password to access a WiFi connection on our cell phones. I live in the Main House and am the only person with a PC. One resident has a laptop and the other resident only uses two cell phones.

We have the newest router from Comcast.

Do you have any suggestions that would allow all residents to have a better WiFi connection?se our mobile phones

The Guest House residents complain that their WiFi/Wireless connection keeps dropping and they have to constantly reset their devices.

Would a router booster help? Should a booster be placed in each residence?

What is this 4 lines that go to each building? If you have a network cable going to each house, and then a WiFi connection in a router in that house, the WiFi signal should be strong there. Basically ignore everything except the router providing WiFi to the house. If rebooting the router fixes the wireless issues, then you may need a better/newer router there.