Complicated (for me) Network Setup

[jleniger]

I do not currently know enough about networking to set up my network as I would like.

I live in a fraternity house and lately we have been experiencing many issues with out network and our set up is less than ideal.

We have the following:
2 configurable switches for the wired LAN
2 Apple Airport Extreme routers
3 Modems/Routers (Provided by CenturyLink).

We tried to upgrade to ONE incoming line for internet, with a higher speed, but due to infrastructure limitations the best we can do is multiple lines at 12 Mb/s.

Currently I believe there is an issue with conflicting IP addresses that is causing our internet to crawl and in some cases not work.

I would like to hear what is suggested to set the network up. My end goal is ONE LAN so that we can eventually implement a server for the house for file storage and network printing, over WiFi and wired, and a roaming WiFi network.

The CenturyLink modems are WiFi capable but not the latest standard (therefore slow).


What I believe needs to be done (with my limited knowledge) is purchase a router that can load balance the 3 WANs, then turn off DHCP and NAT on all 3 modems, and allow the new router to handle DHCP. Additionally, I will set IP addresses on the two switches, one for each Ethernet port in the house, and one for each Airport. The Airports will be set to the IP address specified on the switch. The DHCP range on the router will then start after these IPs.

Is this the best way to do this?
Honestly I do not know how to set anything more complicated than one router or so up, so as much advice as you can give me would be very appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[RealBeast]

To use three distinct WAN (Internet) connections on a single network you really need a quad port load balancing router. There is one good but cheap option from NEWEGG that has the ability to configure several of the LAN ports into WAN and load balance. The other two ports on it would be LAN ports to attach the two switches and everything else wired, including the two airports would come off the switches.

You would have to use only the new quad WAN router for your routing and your modems could not be used for anything other than acting as modems -- you would need configure the 2 airport extremes as wireless access points with no dhcp. The only device that would provide DHCP service would be the new router and everything would be on a single network, wired and wireless.

Is this the direction that you are looking to go?

 

[jleniger]

Yes, definitely.

Next questions:
First, should the switches be set up in such a way that the wired network receives IP addresses from DHCP on the router, or have static ips and the DHCP range set to start after them?

Second, is configuring the modems to actually be modems as simple as turning off DHCP and NAT or not so much? I am only familiar with actual modems; these modem/router/wireless in a box things are somewhat new to me.

EDIT:

Additionally, I would imagine I would need to reserve an IP address on the router for the printer, the server, and the airports, and set them on the respective device, correct?

 

[RealBeast]

The router will be the only DHCP service on the network and you just need to set the DHCP address range to allow for all of your static addresses plus a few spare; so for example if your gateway is 192.168.0.1, use 0.2 to 0.24 for static addresses and set the DHCP range for 0.25 to 0.254.

What brand and model are the switches, switches usually don't need a static address like access points do. I usually use static addresses for printers and servers, and always for access points. And yes, for any device that you set a static address you need to enter it in the router static address table and the device itself.

Yeah, configuring modem/routers are usually just as simple as turning off the routing and wireless radios by checking the correct radio box -- they should have instructions in the manual, if not just post the brand and model. There are a few that require a just a bit more effort.

One other important issue is the number of wireless connections that you will have at any time -- consumer level APs only support a limited number of connections each and do not have any kind of load balancing capability like the enterprise quality stuff (example Cisco Aironet). While I don't use Apple Airport Extremes, I would suspect that they will support around 10 connections each, depending on the bandwidth demand. Best if you use a distinct SSID and tell users which they are on based on proximity and use patterns to keep the number of connections and bandwidth fairly even. Otherwise you are at a higher risk of dropping connections.