Can this work? Bridge / Wan, several routers

Tea_time

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Jan 19, 2015
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Hello,

Long story short, need to replace a current setup made of wifi repeaters by wires (in a hotel). We need each room to have one access point because of distance.

Internet comes from the roof of a building, input into the gateway, the gateway then from the LAN ports need to go in two directions (north and south).

First question is: is connecting one router to another (input internet into WAN port, output from LAN to the next router) possible if we talk about have a line of 6-7 routers on a total length of 100m of ethernet (on each side)?

Second: Long story again, we have an input of internet of actually 3 cables (3 devices on the roof to get the signal from the other side of the river), but our current gateway router has only 2 WAN ports. Is there a solution to have all three combined together?

What would be the easiest setup for future maintenance (if this setup is possible): Bridges? Access points?
 
Solution
Hire someone to set this up for you. Someone is going to have to carefully plan this.
You def don't want any wireless repeaters or nested routers.
switches/WAPs should have client isolation so guests can't hack each other.

WAN1,2,3 -> NAT load balancing/failover/shaping-> layer3 switches-> WAPS, keystones
You could string them that way but you will get a massive mess with all the ip addresses and subnets. It would be better to use the LAN ports and use the routers as AP if they have wireless. If they have no wireless then a simple switch will be simpler.....the lan ports internally are really a switch in a router. As long as the cables between the devices are 100meters or less it will be fine. There likely is some limit to how many devices you can daisy chain but it is some huge number.

Combining connections is not that simple if they have different IP addresses. There are method to bond say ethernet ports together but not sure if that applies in your case. If you control both ends of the connection there may be other options to combine them

 

I presume each of these hotel rooms has a phone? The way most hotels deal with this problem is to buy a DSLAM (or several DSLAMs) usually running VDSL. Put the DSLAMs in your phone room, connected to the Internet. The DSLAM ties in to the phone lines going to each room. In each room you put a VDSL modem. Over short distances like this, VDSL is easily capable of 20+ Mbps. The VDSL modem converts the signal over the phone line back into Ethernet that your customers can plug into. Basically, you're piggybacking ethernet over the existing phone lines going to each room, so you don't have to install new network cable. It's just like regular DSL (although VDSL instead of ADSL), only using your hotel's internal phone lines instead of the phone company's phone lines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL

The downside is cost. The VDSL modems will run you $100-$200 apiece. The DSLAMs will vary depending on how many ports you need, but don't be surprised if it's several thousand dollars. Depending on how your rooms are arranged, you can do the same thing with a switch, and run ethernet cable to RJ45 keystones in each nearby room. This increases the amount of installation work you have to do (rig up ethernet and RJ45 keystones), but decreases the number of DSL connections you need to support. Be sure to buy a few spare VDSL modems to swap in for the ones which inevitably break over the years.

For the occasional WiFi hotspot, you can do the same thing, except the VDSL modem should be installed in a wall or closet in the guest room, and go to a switch. One ethernet cable goes from the switch to a RJ45 drop in a guest room, another to a WiFi access point either in the ceiling or some other place customers can't access.

First question is: is connecting one router to another (input internet into WAN port, output from LAN to the next router) possible if we talk about have a line of 6-7 routers on a total length of 100m of ethernet (on each side)?
Cascading routers like that is generally a bad idea, as it ends up complicating diagnosis and troubleshooting if you experience network problems. You cannot troubleshoot the network by sitting at your desk. You have to take a laptop out to each router and plug it in manually.

Second: Long story again, we have an input of internet of actually 3 cables (3 devices on the roof to get the signal from the other side of the river), but our current gateway router has only 2 WAN ports. Is there a solution to have all three combined together?
That's called bonding. Talk to your ISP about it, as it needs equipment on their end (or on a VPN somewhere on the Internet) to get it working. You basically construct a tunnel between your main router and a router at your ISP or the VPN. The tunnel then transmits traffic over the 3 Internet connections. A server or specialized bonding equipment does the work of converting to/from each router's network connection to the tunnel running over the multiple bonded channels. I believe Mushroom Networks is the company that makes most of the bonding equipment.

Routers with 2 WAN ports generally can only use them as fallback (keep WAN2 as a spare and use it only if WAN1 goes down), or for separate traffic (a single download can only go at the speed of WAN1 or WAN2). Bonding combines all your network connections into a single WAN port (a single download can go at the speed of WAN1 + WAN2 + WAN3 + ... + WANn.)
 

Tea_time

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Jan 19, 2015
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4,510
Thank you both for your answers.

Would this be the easiest solution?

For the three internet cables, each one would go to a single router (one north side, one south, one for the office).

Since each router on North and South side will likely have only 4 LAN ports, I should connect an 8 ports ethernet switch to each of them?

Then from this switch one cable would go to each room and connect to a router setup with a unique IP for diagnosis purpose?
By doing this, and if I keep the 3 routers in the office, I can connect to each one and remotely connect to each room using the IP I setup?

Thank you for the idea of VDSL, unfortunately this is a remote area with some nice facilities but minimalistic.. amenities.. so no phone.
 
Hire someone to set this up for you. Someone is going to have to carefully plan this.
You def don't want any wireless repeaters or nested routers.
switches/WAPs should have client isolation so guests can't hack each other.

WAN1,2,3 -> NAT load balancing/failover/shaping-> layer3 switches-> WAPS, keystones
 
Solution