Need help with a Wi-Fi setup.

Hello all. This is my first post to this forum and thanks for the help in advance.

I am trying to setup Wi-Fi at a friends auto shop for his customers. He would like to provide free Wi-Fi for his customers while they wait for their cars to be serviced. He wants to provide this service from his existing Cable, but wants to ensure that his present office network stays secure. He just has the basic office network with several PC's connected to a Router/Switch to Cable. How can I set this up with minimal cost.

Can you recommend a possible setup? I know I will need a AP, but will I need a firewall between the office network and the Router/Switch that is connected to the cable?

------------------------------------------------------------------------ View this thread:

formatting link

Oh, you want it cheap? Sigh.

The easiest way is to get the shops DSL or cable provider to provide a

2nd IP address. That's usually about $5/month extra depending on ISP. From the DSL or cable modem, connect a cheap ($20) 5 port ethernet switch, which goes to two seperate routers. One for the shop, and one for the customers. I've done that many times and find that it works well. The customer wireless router can be setup as a wireless hotspot with passwords and splash screen.

There are other ways. Two routers in series will work with some limitations due to the double NAT. I don't expect your customers to be running VoIP or anything that requires port forwarding, so that's not going to be an issue. The IP layout is a bit tricky, so bug me if you want details.

There are also routers that do multiple wireless SSID's on a single router. You want cheap, so I suggest a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 or similar cheap router running DD-WRT v24.

There are also ways to do it using VLAN's. I won't pretend to understand how.