Question Isolated LAN on Public WiFi

salex319

Junior Member
Feb 27, 2022
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I am in a condo with public WiFi access. I would like a device that would connect to this WiFi network and then provide me an ethernet connection that I could connect to the WAN input of a router so that I could have a LAN in the condo. Can this be done?
 

Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Just remember if you go the WISP direction that you want to still have a different AP provide your own network's WiFi. Sharing your WiFi and connecting in WISP is too taxing on the radio to handle as it is dealing with relaying between two networks which requires a feat that is hard to do without a dedicated radio for each network.

Your best solution would be getting/configuring a wireless bridge device. These are designed to do exactly what you are trying to do. These are sometimes referred to as a wifi game bridge (they were origionally marketed to get things like the PS2 and Gamecube which had network ports/add-ons but no WiFi cards, to be able to connect to a WiFi network, but were also useful for printers and other devices). Any WiFi router capable of running DD-WRT firmware can perform this by simply changing the mode to "bridge mode". Some of those DD-WRT capable routers can also be setup as your own router as well without performance loss if it has multiple radios. I have owned 2 that had 2 separate 2.4GHz radios so that you could separate out older legacy devices (b/g or b/g/n from the ac devices so that your fast devices are not slowed down as your network is only as fast as the slowest protocol device connected to it).
 

salex319

Junior Member
Feb 27, 2022
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0
6
Thanks for all of the input. Based on your suggestions I found and acquired a GL.iNet GL-AR750. It took about 15 minutes to get it installed and working. Seems to do just what I wanted. Tested Download speeds and compared as follows:

Speedtest: WAN WiFi GL-AR750 WiFi
PC 17mbps 11mbps
iPhone 17mbps 12mbps

Going to hook up Apple TV to LAN connection later and see how that works.

Thanks all.
 

salex319

Junior Member
Feb 27, 2022
4
0
6
WAN WiFi is the public WiFi

Speedtest: WAN WiFi GL-AR750 WiFi
PC 17mbps 11mbps
iPhone 17mbps 12mbps

Streamed a couple of shows on the LAN using my Apple TV. Worked fine.
 

mxnerd

Diamond Member
Jul 6, 2007
6,799
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I mean connecting iPhone directly to condo's public SSID and test the speed.

But if you are satisfied the the speed, it's totally fine.
 

salex319

Junior Member
Feb 27, 2022
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0
6
When iPhone is connected to condo's public SSID download speed is 17 mbps. When connected to LAN download speed is 11mbps.

Not ideal but OK for what I'm doing. I can always connect directly to public SSID to download a very large file.