Some networking questions (kinda long)...

In My Humble Opinion
1

I can usually deal with networking issues on my own, but this is a new situation for me. Also, it’s at work, so I can’t have the internet down for hours, the transition needs to happen as quickly as possible, like, minutes, otherwise I need to go in after hours to take care of it.

First, and main question) I need (want) to set up a (wired) wireless access point that’s also a wired switch. Is that a thing? Here’s what’s going on. At the moment, I have a single wire running out to my register, it goes to my credit card machine. Very soon, I’ll need to add a second network connected device (and I’m not planning to run another wire). Between that and the future proofing since more network devices out there are probably in our future over the years, a (dumb) switch seemed like the perfect way to go. Perfect. Easy peasy, I’ve installed plenty of switches before, they’re about as easy to install as putting in a power strip.

Well, today, my Wireless Extender bit the dust. On top of that, it was kinda wonky to begin with. FTR, I have the exact same one at home and it’s never run quite as perfectly as I’d like it too.

This seemed like a great time to get a new Extender. A wired extender (which I’d rather have, since if I can wire a device, I’ll always go that route), and attach it to the to the switch I’m going to put by the registers. It’s in a more central location than the old one and our cell phones should be able to grab it more easily…especially since it’s wired.

Which brings me to my main question. Can I do this as an all in one thing. I see tutorials online for turning a wireless router into a WAP, but they don’t mention if you can still add wired devices to them (essentially turning them into a wired/wireless switch). I suspect you can, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to, but they don’t mention it.

Second)DD-WRT firmware seems to be popular for setting these things up (from what I’m reading). If anyone is familiar with it, do they know if it supports guest networks on the WAP? I need all the devices wired into our router, wired into various switches (which is basically just part of the main router) to be on one router), wired into this new switch and wirelessly connected to this new switch to be on one network. I also want/need to set up a guest network on it (With it’s own SSID/password) for those times when someone wants/needs to get on our internet. There’s sensitive data floating around on our network and I need to protect it (or at do the best that I can. As of right now, the people that would be using it are ‘trusted’).

Third) Can I mix static and DHCP. I’m pretty sure you can as I seem to have accidentally set one up that way, but I’d like some confirmation. Many, many years ago when I first started setting up home networks, I learned it was easier to set the router to static DHCP and give each new device it’s own IP settings. (back in the day at least) This prevented a lot of the ip collision errors. Whether or not that’s still a problem, it’s nice because I know what IP address each device is on and when a single device drops off the network, pinging it first is a good troubleshooting method (getting a response vs not getting one sends me in two different directions for how I proceed).

OTOH, when someone needs to use my network and asks for my password, saying ‘hold on, I need to set up your phone’ is kinda a PITA. Or worse, trying to get something on the network that doesn’t have GUI (or any UI) or not even possible sometimes. So, can I set my router (not WAP/Extenter/etc) to DHCP but still program devices with individual IP addresses? Like I said, I seem to have one situation where that’s the case, but it could just be a fluke.

Fourth) (Only a semi networking question and I’ve sorta answered in myself in all the time I’ve been typing this). My router, modem and one of my switches are in a horrible place (which is part of the reason for needing the extender. It’s not that far away, it just that the signal emanates from a spot where it really doesn’t have a chance of getting anywhere). Accessing it involves climbing up on some stuff, moving a bunch of stuff, reaching really far back with one arm…I’m so close to not being able to reach the power cord that if I drop it, I might not be able to grab it again. And no, moving it isn’t an option at this point. When I have an issue and they need to be rebooted, it’s kind of a whole big thing. I need a solution. I’ve read (here) about IP addressable power strips, but they seem kinda spendy. I was going to ask about options. But I’m looking and it seems like I’m better off just getting a remote controlled one, or even just a remote controlled outlet. My parents have one that plugs into a wall. They use it to turn a Christmas tree on and off. Works great. That’s probably the answer. I’m tall enough that I’ll probably be able to do that from the floor.

Well there’s my long post…I’m probably have more questions as people start answering.

2

Both routers that I’ve played with seemed to allow static IP addresses for any devices I wanted, with DHCP addresses for the others. I suppose when it assigned IP addresses, it just didn’t use any IP addresses that were pre-assigned to any device. Anyway, you also generally define a range of IP addresses that the router will choose from when it assigns addresses, and define your static addresses to be something not in that range. e.g., DHCP addresses in the range 192.168.0.1 through 192.168.0.100, and put your static addresses at 192.168.0.101 and above.

I’m not sure what the modern-day rule is for assigning IP addresses to any host in your local net that’s running a server program. In some sense, EVERY host on your net is a server of some sort – even if you’ve simply set up SMB or some protocol for file-sharing, each machine that’s sharing any files is being a server. The older rule seemed to be: Any server in your local net should have a static IP address. I don’t quite get why that’s important, or why it ever was.

3

Also pay some attention to your hosts file. When I did static IP addresses, I also tended to list every one of those in the hosts file on every machine. I don’t even remember any more why I thought that was a good idea, but I thought at the time that it seemed important.

Anyway, any machine with a dynamically assigned IP address needs to NOT be in the hosts file on any machine. You’d get stupid IP-resolution errors if a machine got assigned one DHCP address and other machines had that machine listed in their hosts file with a different address.

That’s manageable when you have a little home network with, say, up to five machines on it. When you’re the sysadmin for a LAN of 500-some machines, that’s not going to go well.

4

Don’t you have a router that can do both wired and wireless? My router is wireless but ALSO has four ports on the back that I can plug plain old ethernet CAT-whatever wires into. I thought all routers were like that.

How many devices are you connecting? How many register lanes do you have?

5

Sure. Many routers these days have an option “Seperate wireless and wired” or some such, which must be “off”… so they are connected…

You can use even a modem router for its access point for that reason… ensure its DHCP server is off, and ensure that its LAN port is not clashing, and its sitting there connecting wireless lan to the wired lan ports… its connected upstream by one of its switch ports…

Openwrt guest…
https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/guest-wlan

yes you can mix static and dynamic… either keeps the statics outside the dhcp range, or configure the permanent entries in the dhcp server.

6

Between the answers I got here and what I’ve read else where, I think I should explain my network infrastructure…or at least what I want it to be.

Starts with the modem (duh). One wire goes to a wireless router’s WAN port. That router branches off and sends wires all over the building. Of those wires, one goes to our register bay. At our register bay, I’d like to install another switch. If that’s all I needed to do, it would be easy enough. However, I’d like that switch to have wireless capabilities.

In a ‘good enough’ world, the wireless connections would just be part of the wired connections. That is, the switch would grab them all (wired and wireless) and send them back to the router to be dealt with. In a perfect world, the switch (and I understand a dumb switch can’t do this) would have a guest network.

Two things, now that I’m thinking about it, however.
1)I think I’m better off just getting a dumb switch and a wireless repeater that has a wired connection to attach to that switch. In fact, that seems like it’ll save a whole lot of headaches. As much as I don’t care for setting up extenders, it’ll probably be a lot easier with wireless functions turned off on the main router.

2)As I give this even more thought, even though all the wireless devices (both the ones I want on the main network and the ones I want on the guest network) will connect at the switch, the main router (which has a guest network) will/should handle that just fine, I think, right?

Actually, I don’t think they will. Looking at my home extender, there’s no option for setting up a guest mode and I don’t recall if my work one gave me the option to extend both the regular and guest network.
Sorry for the long rambling post.

In the mean time, I know within a few days I’ll be going from one network connected device to two, so I need to get a switch out there ASAP.