Isolating a home network

[Audiofight]

Here's the deal. I do the occasional computer cleanup when I need extra cash or for friends and family.

Whenever I bring in a strange computer to my network, I always yank the cable from the WAN port on my SonicWall router and plug the cable modem directly into the "stranger".

This is getting old, especially with as large as my home network is becoming (desktop, 2 servers, 2 laptops, Tivo).

Here is my plan (feel free to shoot holes in it):

Grab a cheap Linksys/Netgear/Dlink router of some sort and plug it behind the SonicWall. Leave DHCP on with the second router and setup a seperate IP range.

If my thinking is on track, this should isolate the second network from the first and prevent the stranger from communicating with my local network.

It sounds too easy and I am probably over-simplifying it.

 

[her209]

Your solution will still allow hosts behind the Linkysys/Netgear/Dlink router to communicate with the hosts behind the SonicWall router.

How about subnetting?

Assuming the internal interface of your Sonic Firewall is 192.168.0.1 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, setup your DHCP to dish out IP addresses with an IP range of 192.168.0.2-126 subnet mask of 255.255.255.128. This will create two subnets. When you get a "strange" computer to work on, statically assign it an IP address in the range of 192.168.0.129-192.168.0.254 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.128 and gateway of 192.168.0.1.

 

[JackMDS]

Network Segregation - http://www.ezlan.net/shield.html

 

[RebateMonger]

Jack's advice, which doubtless includes a second router to isolate the "stranger", yet give it protected access to the Internet, is the easiest solution. You don't need a fancy second router, as long as it is reliable.

 

[Audiofight]

Jack's advice is what I was going for.....thanks

I was looking to pickup a cheapy router to segregate the network.