How to divide WAN access?

[invulnarable27]

Hello,

I came across a post that mentioned a small business that offered free wifi to their clients. Problem is that they want to separate the clients from accessing their personal computers on the same network.
Should I look into Windows HomeGroup?

After reading this, I noticed at school that when I connect to the wifi, and I try to see other hosts the network, I am the only one. Somehow the school is able to "VLAN" the wifi somehow. How do they accomplish this?

I would like to do this for my wifi at home when friends come over. Has anyone ever implemented something like this. Also can a standard Verison Fios Router have such a capability?

Thanks

 

[sturm]

Some home routers now have a Guest wireless that is kept separate from the normal network.

As for you school wifi, they are probably using a combination of vlan and ACLs to control traffic.

 

[invulnarable27]

I went out and searched for a router that supports the guest feature and found that the Cisco Valet supports it for the price of $90 bucks. Not too bad.

I am really interested in how my school does it though. I not sure how it works, but can an ACL be setup to deny "network discovery" access to every user who authenticates? Being a school, it has to do this for 30,000+ students.

One last thing, what does the setup of a campus area network look like? Is it just daisy chaining many routers together to provide wifi to each building?

I am not setting it up but would like to know for educational purposes.

 

[sturm]

They configure the ACLs by IP addresses, not necessarily by user, although with Active Directory they could.

Typical large networks will have a main router at each building with enough IDFs (switch rooms) to provide network to the rest of the building.
Each building router is then connected to a main router(s) that handle the traffic destined for the internet or other places outside on the WAN.

My school network contains 15 buildings, 12 of them have a main router. Each outlying building connects by leased lines back to our main router(switch) - Cisco 6513 that handles all internet traffic and inter-building communication.

 

[invulnarable27]

Best answer selected by invulnarable27.