Help With Wirless Setup

telecomops101

A friend of mine owns a resturant in which he had me set up his establishment as a hot spot. I know I did something wrong, because the customers are complaining about slow speeds and are unable to see the SSID as "VILLAGE". Here is the setup:

ISP is Verizon (just as any fyi, all the equipment except for the access point are located in the office area on the second floor. There are only two floors to the establishment)

WAN connection from the ISP modem goes to exsisting 4 port cable/dsl router

Connections to this router: ports 1 to reservation system, Port 2 to his desktop, Port 3 is bad and port 4 goes to a Linksys 8 port workgrpup switch. (all IP aadresses on the router are static)

On the 8 port switch he has his credit card system and other connections to which I am unsure

I connected the Netgear Range Max 4 port cable/dsl Wireless router to port 8 on the switch to port 1 on the Wireless router

I connected port 2 of the Wireless router to a Netgear Access Point that is located on 1st floor dinning room/ bar area

Do I need to change the way the DHCP is setup on the Wireless and Access point? How do i configure the SSID?

Tyrant1919

I don't know if I'd trust my small business network with a half dozen systems of mine being on a publicly accesable wireless network. I don't think security is too good at all. Unless he wanted to invest into something like a Sonicwall. That'd be overkill though.

If he really wants to offer free internet, I'd get a 2nd cable conection. That way customers are on a totally seperate and dedicated connection.

sthomas

First, I would consider replacing the cable/DSL router since it has a bad port. It may not be necessary but could be a sign that more problems will occur with the device. Make sure you do not have the network cable plugged into the WAN port on the Netgear access point since you are going from a switch, and going from a switch to a switch you may need a crossover cable but with most newer switches it will auto negotiate so you can use a regular or crossover cable. Also, try the usual to get the access point to work. Upgrade the firmware would be first, and then maybe change the channel on the access point just in case there is some interference somewhere. You can do those kind of changes on the Access Point web interface, just type in the ip address in a web browser. If you still can't get it to work after that it is possible that you have a flakey WAP and need to return it for a different one.

I agree with Tyrant1919 about the security issue. Getting a seperate internet connection would be a good way to get to fix that but may not be cost affective. I am not a cisco expert yet but I think if you get something like this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833120011

or this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833120314

You could do more with security at the very least configure VLANs. If those are a bit to pricey then I would recommend Linksys if you are going to buy new equipment. I hope that helps.

hetty

I probably wouldnt let customers surf everything, wouldnt your business be liable for any P2P or adult material that goes through your network?

I would try to secure the whole network up using something like a ZyXEL ZyWALL 35 UTM. Filters content, anti-virus, firewall. More expensive than the Cisco routers but its an all-in-one appliance. Im sure there are quite a few similar ones out there, probably cheaper too.