Help connecting LANs together

[Sarcosmos]

Hello all,

 

Currently, I live in a fourplex and over the last year and a half, friends of mine have come to live in two of the three remaining units. With all of us living so close I had the idea to link our networks together either into a big LAN or a WAN of some sort for file sharing and gaming with direct connections to each other. All three of the units that were looking at connecting together each have a connection to an ISP. All three of us are using a Router/Modem combo provided by our ISPs with myself bridging mine into a third party Router. It is possible for us to run cables to one central location for whatever hardware is needed but I do not know how to go about connecting the three networks together. What hardware should I use to connect the networks? A router or a Switch? And how do I work the IP addressing? What addresses do I need to assign and with what? Do I need to port forward?

 

Requirements I'd like to meet with this system include:

- File sharing capabilities peer to peer within the network running through ethernet so we can push gigabit speeds 

- easy LAN-like gaming from any one network to another as well as all three at the same time

- If possible allow full function of all ethernet ports on everyone's routers to avoid us each needing a switch

- keep ISP connections separate to avoid any of us getting any more or less bandwidth than were each paying for

 

The hardware that we currently have is as follows:

- All three have our ISP provided Modem/Router combo which is a Cisco DPC3848V DOCSIS 3.0 24x8 Wireless Residential Gateway

- My bridged router which is a Linksys AC2600 MU-MIMO EA8500

- A spare D-Link DIR-862L AC1600

 

Any Advice you can offer would be helpful

 

Thanks

[Bransonb3]

It sounds to me like you could use a site to site vpn through the router. Not sure if any of your routers support this.

[Windows7ge]

If you want gigabit file sharing you won't find it going over a WAN link. Just telling you now.

When it comes to commercial grade switches & routers you can configure them to handout specific addresses via specific lines. Have multiple default gateways in a pool...but that's out of your price range and you already have the routers...

 

Linus made a video where you could link the routers together using a piece of hardware to increase your internet speed (legitimately) which could then lets you link the three rooms on the same network. Give you the internet performance of the three routers combined and give you ~1Gbit file sharing locally.

 

I can't verify it...just throwing it out there.

 

That's the only real idea I have. Otherwise you could install dual or quad port Ethernet cards in your computers (assuming they're not laptops) then link them between the file server you want to share. Online gaming will still be over the internet but your close proximity to each other should already cause little lag and tight pings between each other.

 

Someone could have a 1Gbit switch in their room and run it to the other two rooms. I don't know how the computers would behave seeing:

Default gateway: 192.168.0.1

Default gateway: 192.168.1.1

Default gateway: 192.168.etc

 

You'd have to configure all three networks to use the same network: 192.168.0.0/24, 192.168.1.0/24, 10.0.0.0/24 (personal preference. Makes it easier if you have to put it in manually a lot)

You could then configure the routers to allocate addresses .2-.84 to one room, .85-.169 to another, and .170-.254 to the last.

Still I don't know how the computers would behave seeing three default gateways but being all on the same network would give you almost everything you want.

[mariushm]

The absolute easiest would be to add a second network card in each computer you guys have and buy a switch/router (optionally with wireless option to allow wireless network cards)  and connect everyone to the switch installed in one of your apartments ... boom you're all in a private network, and everyone can still connect to the Internet through their own internet connections.

 

For sharing files between each others, something very simple would be to install a DC++ server ( for example on Linux you'd have Verlihub or on Windows you would have YnHub, these are just a couple of options).

The server needs very few resources, doesn't need much power, it could probably work on something as simple as a raspberry pi 3. The DC++ server software basically just passes messages between the DC++ clients connected to it, so everyone in your private network connected to it can see what anyone else shares and can download stuff, or just chat. 

The DC++ client can also act like a chat software. You have the plain old DC++ client, or you can use more advanced clients like StrongDC++ that offer more features... i personally preferred to use oDC back when I was still using DC++.

 

If you want to create torrents and make them available just for you guys in the private network, you can set up a torrent tracker software on the server (again, the website which stores the torrents and makes them public for everyone in the private network needs very few resources, just a computer that can run mysql , PHP and a web server, something like apache or nginx  (all work on Linux or Windows as well) .. You can install something like Gazelle  or TBDev and you can create torrents, upload them on your own private tracker site and they automatically show up for everyone in the network.

 

But for just a bunch of you guys, it would probably be just easier to set up the DC++ server and everyone just leaves DC++ client running in the background .. clients in Windows could be  the plain DC++ (kinda like uTorrent, basic, simple), oDC (old but loved in when i still used dc++) , StrongDC++ ,

 

 

 

[Bransonb3]

13 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Linus made a video where you could link the routers together using a piece of hardware to increase your internet speed

I believe this is the video Windows7ge is talking about: 

 

or this one: 

 

[Windows7ge]

@Bransonb3 "Double or Triple your internet speed" Was the one I was referencing.

Although I like the 10Gbit idea. I got tired of 1Gbit so I moved to 10Gbit fiber-optic. It's time 10Gbit became the mainstream.

[Sarcosmos]

Would the Ethernet cards need to be dual or quad port cards or would a single port card work while using the built in one on the motherboards?

[mariushm]

If you mean about my suggestion, basically it doesn't matter.  You need one network port for your internet connection and one port for your private connection - doesn't matter if the ports are on separate network cards or on a single dual or quad network card. You use one network port to connect to your own cable modem (or whatever you use) and the internet, and you use a separate network port/card to connect to a router or switch that has no internet connection and everyone connects to this switch or router and the files are transferred through this private network.

[The Benjamins]

9 hours ago, mariushm said:

The absolute easiest would be to add a second network card in each computer you guys have and buy a switch/router (optionally with wireless option to allow wireless network cards)  and connect everyone to the switch installed in one of your apartments ... boom you're all in a private network, and everyone can still connect to the Internet through their own internet connections.

 

For sharing files between each others, something very simple would be to install a DC++ server ( for example on Linux you'd have Verlihub or on Windows you would have YnHub, these are just a couple of options).

The server needs very few resources, doesn't need much power, it could probably work on something as simple as a raspberry pi 3. The DC++ server software basically just passes messages between the DC++ clients connected to it, so everyone in your private network connected to it can see what anyone else shares and can download stuff, or just chat. 

The DC++ client can also act like a chat software. You have the plain old DC++ client, or you can use more advanced clients like StrongDC++ that offer more features... i personally preferred to use oDC back when I was still using DC++.

 

If you want to create torrents and make them available just for you guys in the private network, you can set up a torrent tracker software on the server (again, the website which stores the torrents and makes them public for everyone in the private network needs very few resources, just a computer that can run mysql , PHP and a web server, something like apache or nginx  (all work on Linux or Windows as well) .. You can install something like Gazelle  or TBDev and you can create torrents, upload them on your own private tracker site and they automatically show up for everyone in the network.

 

But for just a bunch of you guys, it would probably be just easier to set up the DC++ server and everyone just leaves DC++ client running in the background .. clients in Windows could be  the plain DC++ (kinda like uTorrent, basic, simple), oDC (old but loved in when i still used dc++) , StrongDC++ ,

 

 

 

 

8 hours ago, Sarcosmos said:

Would the Ethernet cards need to be dual or quad port cards or would a single port card work while using the built in one on the motherboards?

this idea would be the easiest to setup, I would go with that. all you would need is 2 Ethernet ports per machine. to make things easier to remember you could manually assign IP's to machines example (192.168.1.100 to internet/room lan, 192.168.2.100 private lan) this isn't needed.

 

EDIT: can they set up 3 DHCPs on say 192.168.1.xxx, 192.168.2.xxx, 192.168.3.xxx and have 3 different VLANs per apartment? can't they see other machines thought that. (I never messed with vlans before)

[Falconevo]

@SarcosmosIf you can put the modems in 'bridge mode' for the ISPs, you can load balance all 3 connections together and have an internal subnet for each network that can communicate with each other.

*EDIT* looks like the modem can easily be set to bridge mode as the following page confirms;

https://help.teksavvy.com/hc/en-us/articles/204778134-How-To-Bridge-the-Cisco-DPC3848

 

If you can provide some more information on the ISP's you are using and the modem/routers you have.  That will help here significantly but the actual task is pretty easy, however you will need a custom router to do this and provide this functionality.

 

Here's what I would propose;

 

Each modem is put in its bridge state, to allow the DHCP address or static IP from your ISP to be assigned to a corresponding WAN port on the pfSense box.  pfSense box doesn't have to be massively powerful but a 4 port Intel card is essential.   Any wireless capability can be handled by adding an access point to the managed switch and adding vlan tagging in the AP.  Ideally a Ubiquiti unit if you have the spare cash for one.

Each WAN connection is added to a load balanced routing group allowing for 3x Bandwidth in certain scenarios if required.  Or can provide fail over capability for the rest of the house should anyone's modem drop connection.

The LAN port would be connected to a 1Gbit managed switch with vLAN support (can be a smart switch also) You can pick up old ProCurve HP switches with a managed web interface and 24-48Gb ports for about £30-50 off eBay so not a big outlay.   Setting each corresponding port to the correct VLAN tag is simple, each cat5e+ cable runs to the corresponding room to let the user have their connectivity and DHCP range.

 

Each VLAN gets its own IP range and subnet, i have put examples in the image attached but you can use any IP range and subnet you prefer.  Stick to /24's if you are unfamiliar with networking subnetting.   Each VLAN can then have access control performed at the firewall, you can either open everything with any/any/any rules but ideally I wouldn't open everything between you and your friends PCs but that's just me for ease of use you may just want to open all in the internal VLANs.  If you give absolutely no shits about all your PC's being able to communicate on the same ports inside the same subnets, you can simplify the LAN side by simply removing the VLANs and having a simple LAN /24 subnet.

 

Easy enough, have done it recently with a business renting out apartments which needed a internet in each apartment but could only get ADSL2 connectivity to the site.  So they had 4x ADSL2 connections bonded, load balanced and setup for failover.  For this installation some QoS was then enabled on the LAN side to prevent users abusing all the connection speed at once giving them the ability to burst 60% of the combined connection speed for 30 seconds then getting throttled to 30% over extended periods.  This keeps things quick and some layer7 traffic shaping was done to have gaming services as a priority.