My Not So Private Network

[Daysy]

I have just moved apartment and in my old place I had a very simple network setup of a modem\router serving wifi for most of our devices and a raspberry pi connected by Ethernet serving as network storage, basic server type stuff and as a box for me to ssh into and just generally play around with.

Now in my new apartment building there are a series of wifi hotspots spread out through the building that I have to use for my internet connection with the one closest to me only giving good coverage to about 75% of my apartment.

So what I am trying to do is connect into that hotspot (login via captive portal) then share that connection into my own private network set up in a similar way to how I had before, with the aim being to give wifi coverage to my whole apartment and also to be able to host network storage that other people connecting to the hotspot can't see

Also as a bonus I wouldn't mind being able to rout all my internet traffic through a VPN

Can any of you Network gurus help me or point in the right direction? Any kind of help would be very much appreciated as I am at a total loss

[KuJoe]

The first solution that comes to mind is getting a HooToo device (I use this one) which can connect to the wireless network with a captive portal. The HooToo creates it's own wireless network with its own DHCP server and you would just connect your devices to the HooToo and be done with it. As for getting a wired connection, you can get a router with DD-WRT firmware and have that connect to the HooToo wirelessly as a bridge and then use the ports for any wired devices.

 

I'm sure there are other travel routers that probably have wired ports on them, but I only have experience with the HooToo TripMate Nano so that's the only one I can recommend/comment on.

[KuJoe]

Oh and in regards to the VPN, here's my recommended solution:

 

Do the same as above but instead of connecting all of your devices to the HooToo's SSID, setup a wireless network on the DD-WRT router and then configure the DD-WRT router to connect to an external VPN server. This way all traffic that goes through the DD-WRT router will go through the VPN (just don't expect to use a lot of video streaming services like Hulu and Netflix). The HooToo will only connect to your apartment's wireless (through the captive portal) and your DD-WRT router will be the only device that connects to the HooToo with the rest of your network going through the DD-WRT router.

 

Now of course this will basically triple the latency, so don't expect to have a good experience with online games or VoIP.

[Daysy]

1 hour ago, KuJoe said:

The first solution that comes to mind is getting a HooToo device (I use this one) which can connect to the wireless network with a captive portal. The HooToo creates it's own wireless network with its own DHCP server and you would just connect your devices to the HooToo and be done with it.

Thank you! That was exactly the missing link I was struggling with

1 hour ago, KuJoe said:

Oh and in regards to the VPN, here's my recommended solution:

 

Do the same as above but instead of connecting all of your devices to the HooToo's SSID, setup a wireless network on the DD-WRT router and then configure the DD-WRT router to connect to an external VPN server. This way all traffic that goes through the DD-WRT router will go through the VPN (just don't expect to use a lot of video streaming services like Hulu and Netflix). The HooToo will only connect to your apartment's wireless (through the captive portal) and your DD-WRT router will be the only device that connects to the HooToo with the rest of your network going through the DD-WRT router.

 

Now of course this will basically triple the latency, so don't expect to have a good experience with online games or VoIP.

I was thinking something along those lines, I could always just connect directly to use Skype and Netflix without the VPN

 

Thanks again for your help ?