Device to access isolated network

csanders · April 13

Not sure if this is the proper section to ask this in, but it seemed the closest.

For a work project, I have an isolated "island" network with various hardware connected. Mostly AV equipment that is IP controlled from a control device on that network. Occasionally, I need to access this island network to troubleshoot problems. Typically, this would involve just connecting my laptop to a port on the switch for this system, and having at it. However, this network is physically located in a different building from my office.

Our enterprise network team does not want to consolidate the equipment onto our primary network, primarily because this equipment does a lot of its communication via multicast and video streams are huge.

I'm trying to find a cost-effective way to drop a dual-nic device on both the commodity network, and this island network to act as a "bridge". In theory, I could VNC, RDP, etc onto this "bridge" device and access the island that way.

Right now, I'm at the proof-of-concept stage. If it works, I'll pitch it for scaling up to the numerous systems we have deployed. For this reason, I'm trying to go as inexpensive as possible. I'd considered a raspberry pi with an additional USB NIC, but I'm unsure if that would be reliable long-term without constant care and feeding. I'd also considered a small form factor PC with dual NICs, but I worry about cost.

Any suggestions of an alternative, or would one of these likely be the best place to start?

Needfuldoer · April 13

All you need is a PC that can officially run Windows 11 and take a second NIC, even if it's a $100 used OptiPlex. That way it's still "current" enough to get software support along with the rest of your environment. A Raspberry Pi's going to cost about that much anyway, once you add all the accessories it will need.

26 minutes ago, csanders said:

I'd considered a raspberry pi with an additional USB NIC, but I'm unsure if that would be reliable long-term without constant care and feeding.

It would run fine. My hesitation there is that you'll be introducing a one-off to the environment, so if anything goes wrong with it, that will be your fault it's broken and your responsibility to fix. If you set up "just another Windows PC" then you'll most likely get some support (and less pushback).