Networking – Network switch with a wifi connection

networkingrouterswitchwireless-networking

I've recently moved house, and was delighted to find that the house was already wired with CAT-5e cable in a few rooms, plus a neat little patch-panel in the office!

Unfortunately though, the place where the internet enters the house (i.e. where I need to put the modem) is nowhere near where the patch panel is. I've had a cable guy come out today and he's basically said there's no (easy) way that the connection point can be moved to the office. I also can't (easily) run another network cable from the modem to the patch panel.

So instead, what I want to know is – is there a device I can use that's effectively a network switch, but the incoming signal comes via wifi? i.e. I want the device to be on my wifi network, and then act as a switch so I can plug it into the patch panel. I appreciate that this means I'll be sharing the network bandwidth but I have an AC router so hopefully bandwidth won't be an issue.

Hope that makes sense!

Best Answer

Many Wi-Fi devices have this mode – usually "range extenders" but occassionally "wireless routers" as well. (The former don't actually have a switch; they're just a bridge between Wi-Fi and a single Ethernet port. You'll need a separate switch, and it's really for the best. The latter usually have a 4-port switch.)

Depending on manufacturer, the option might be called "client mode", "station mode", or sometimes "bridge mode". (The last one often, but not always, means that the device will also provide its own Wi-Fi.)

For example, TP-Link range extenders call it "client mode". Mikrotik general purpose wireless routers call it "bridge mode" (specifically 'station-pseudobridge' in your case). Netgear routers call it "wireless bridge".

Depending on how the house was built, powerline (Homeplug AV or G.hn) might offer better performance than Wi-Fi bridging, and would avoid the MAC-address weirdness that the wireless bridge mode has.

Finally, you don't necessarily have to run a dedicated cable from the modem/router directly to where the patch panel is. If there's already a cable going from the patch panel to a wall socket somewhere near the modem – just use that!

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Keep them under your eyes :)

A quick look at them when your computer freezes is always good to see if it is a connection problem or not.

Those home networking guides need revision for wireless as I don't see any benefit to put a wireless router near an electrical panel... only possible problems.

Anyways, distances from the basement will probably be longer than from the office and this means more cable and a worse wireless connection mainly with a floor between the router and the computer.

How to setup home network with two routers (or “to not waste superb WiFi router in basement”)

There is no need to change the modem to 'router' mode.

You've described this topology:

===coax=== <WAN>
        cable modem
           <LAN> -------[ethernet switch]-------- <WAN>
                                             synology router
                                                  <LAN> --- etc.

In this situation, it doesn't matter whether devices connected directly to cable modem's switch will get public or private addresses, because you wouldn't want to have any devices connected there at all:

Your main reason for using the Synology router was its protection features, and connecting devices to the cable modem's switch would completely bypass the attic router.
From the attic router's perspective, the switch is on the "WAN" side. It is a separate network from your main LAN, it has separate addressing, and the Synology router does not serve DHCP on that interface. (Even if you statically configured the addresses to match Synology LAN, it wouldn't work as the devices would still be physically in the wrong network.)
Devices connected to this switch wouldn't be able to access your main Synology LAN, unless you configured a hole through its firewalls and security features. (Or you could use port forwarding to get into the LAN, but a home network that relies on port-forwarding inside the network is just not good design at all.)
Your main LAN would be able to access devices on this switch (as long as both routers use different subnet prefixes), but the Synology router would perform NAT on the connections, meaning these devices wouldn't see the real client IP addresses. This is just a minor issue (and in some routers a NAT exception can be configured), but it can be an annoyance depending on what exactly you run in the basement, and again – not great design.

If you need the switch because you must have Ethernet ports available in the basement, there's only one option: basement → attic → basement. Run one Ethernet cable from the modem directly to the router's WAN interface, and a second cable back from the router's LAN to the basement switch.

Once that's done, there is absolutely no advantage in having the modem in 'router' mode.

If you cannot run a second cable all the way, the same can be achieved using two managed switches with VLAN tagging:

On both switches, configure 1) one port in 'access' mode for the "WAN" vlan, 2) one port in 'trunk' or 'all VLANs tagged' mode; 3) the remaining ports in 'access' mode for the "LAN" vlan.
Install one switch in the basement, the other in the attic.
Connect the switches together using the "trunk" port.
On the attic switch, connect the designated "WAN" port to the router's WAN side, and one of the "LAN" ports to the router's LAN side.
On the basement switch, connect the designated "WAN" port to the cable modem's Ethernet output. (Use the remaining ports for whatever you like.)

Best Answer

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