DHCP Static IP, dns and gateway per client
 

Hi,
Looking forward to your feedback.

I have set up a community wifi network with approximately 100 homes connected to access points on a tower.

What we would like to do is connect several DSL internet gateways to our WIFI network. We would like to route traffic from users smartphone, tablet, laptop connected to the WIFI network through their own gateway at home. Without sharing it with other people.
The only thing I can think of to accomplish this is to use dhcp.conf and statically assign an IP address, dns and gateway to a mobile device via is mac address; but I am not sure how the config will look like in dhcp.conf.

So please feel free to send me examples of what you think is the best way to accomplish this task.

Thank you..

Sorry, but the only feedback I can think of is "why bother?"

If you've got 100 homes connected to multiple access points on a 'tower' of some sort, why would you then route those same people back to the connection they already have at their homes??? Why not just let the users connect to their own access points as they are now. That is private, not shared with anyone, etc.

Hi TB0ne,
Thank you for your feedback.

At present we only use the WIFI network for local VOIP service with an app installed on a device.i.e. smartphone, tablet, laptop.

I do not provide any users on the WIFI network with an internet service. So it would be nice if we could connect to our own internet connection at home while roaming on the WIFI network.

I sure i can probably do this with some linux dhcp.conf file but not sure which distribution to use.

Thanks again.

Hi there,

so let me try to sum it up as I understood the scenario.
There's a group of people in the area who a) each have their own DSL internet hookup at home, either with wired connection or with their own WiFi AP, and b) use a semi-public WiFi network connecting to a central AP "on a tower", as you say.

I don't think so. The major problem I see is that many devices (smartphones, tablets, notebooks) would have to connect and log in to two wireless networks at the same time (their private one and the shared one). I've never heard of a WiFi driver yet that would support this. Though ... with a sophisticated network setup maybe ... creating an alias of the WiFi adapter ... then it would be a matter of routing, rather than DHCP. However, I don't know if standard WiFi adapters can establish connections to two different APs at the same time. You'll probably need two separate WiFi adapters on each device, which would be most unusual.

[X] Doc CPU

Would have been good to provide these details up front.

And you *MIGHT* be able to do this, providing ALL Internet access went through one point, by specifying different network routes, so that just traffic to your VOIP server went through gateway xxxx, while everything else went to yyyy, but doing a lot of people like that would be amazingly time-consuming. You'd have to identify each MAC address (and keep them up to date when devices change), manually enter routes/addresses for them in the dhcp config, etc. If you had a few people, fine...but 100 or more?
The distribution doesn't matter, since they all run DHCP the same way. And if you're sure you can do it, why ask how? We'd love to know...post your configuration after you get it working.

Thank you for your feedback.

I won't get to test this network setup until later this month when I am at this month when I travel to the location.
If it works I will reply with an update including the configurations and network diagrams.