Two Separate Networks in my home - How?

[marcowoman]

I've been doing a fair amount of reading and experimenting, but I still can't seem to be successful in what I'm attempting to do:

I've got a ~5 computers on my home network (xp) which I successfully have set up and mostly all are sharing folders, data, etc. I have a music server and a movie server, etc., and this is all working fine. This is a combination of wired and wireless.

I would like to add to this network: The ability for friends to come over with their laptops and connect to the internet. Of course I want this capability to be via a 'second' network, such that they don't have access to all my shared folders and various data on my primary network. I may also set up a kids/guest system in my home where people can also access the internet (wired/wireless) without any danger of access to my primary network.

I've been experimenting for a couple of months with two wireless routers, and have hooked them up in various configs with different settings, but still unable to get the two separate networks set up and running the way I want.

Any recommendations for best/easiest approach?

 

[muz]

Hmm here is prolly what i would do . Note its just an example with 3comps on your network and 2 on the guests
I dunno if they still would be able to get to your file server though through the internet gateway

 

[dude_se]

why not just restrict guests and stuff to the folders you dont want them to see and only allow specific computers

 

[marcowoman]

Muz, thanks. I think I've been trying basically your suggestion, but I guess my problems are in the implementation.... I'm not able to 'block' traffic from network 2 from network 1, while still allowing internet traffic.

For example, is there any way in a router to configure a LAN port to not allow any traffic across to the other LAN ports, but only allow traffic to the internet?

Dude-se, perhaps you're on to something here... perhaps my problem is that I just am not sophisticated enough with file sharing on all my XP boxes to do this correctly. Essentially I'm just sharing all access to files/drives on my various computers, and also running some simple music/photo/video servers. How can I share files only to specific computers/users or disallow sharing to specific IP addresses? I'm using XP Pro.

 

[muz]

Hmm maybe a software firewall could do this for you

Oh actually the gateway box would be a computer dedicated to that with 2 nic's , one to connect to network one and one for network 2

 

[dude_se]

xp media centre/pro can do this. theres a security tabs in folders (needs to be unlocked in folder options first). it can restrict all sorts of stuff and if you do it properly you can set it to a password prompt when users try to open a folder. i think you should just add certain users to certain folders and the rest will get blocked. easy enough.

 

[DJ-CHRIS1]

Muz, thanks. I think I've been trying basically your suggestion, but I guess my problems are in the implementation.... I'm not able to 'block' traffic from network 2 from network 1, while still allowing internet traffic.

For example, is there any way in a router to configure a LAN port to not allow any traffic across to the other LAN ports, but only allow traffic to the internet?

Dude-se, perhaps you're on to something here... perhaps my problem is that I just am not sophisticated enough with file sharing on all my XP boxes to do this correctly. Essentially I'm just sharing all access to files/drives on my various computers, and also running some simple music/photo/video servers. How can I share files only to specific computers/users or disallow sharing to specific IP addresses? I'm using XP Pro.

If you want to do stuff properly, this is fairly easy. I run the same setup at home, with 2 networks (actually 3), with one of them for my computers, and one of them for less trusted computers (internet visible servers, wifi, etc).

I achieve this by having VLAN's, as well as a router with 2 different lan interfaces. I use a software router called Smoothwall (However, the extended defense distribution of it). I can help you since I have virtually the exact same thing, feel free to add my MSN or AIM from my profile.