Multiple LANS on TL-ER6020
Hi,
I got a TL-ER6020 router about a year ago. At the time, I just needed multiple WANS so I could have alternate ISP's or more to the point, I could drop one, bring another on, and the users would be none the wiser. As our network has expanded, I am looking at the possibility of using one of the WAN/LAN ports as another LAN. So far from what I've read, it doesn't seem to be possible (why is it a WAN/LAN port and not just a WAN port?).
We have a ton of WiFi access points, so we can accommodate 100s of people all getting on their smart devices at once. This is leaving my Class-C network a bit starved of IP's. At the same time, I want to bring the office into the mix. Our office has their own DSL and own network What I was hoping to do, is to serve the office LAN from one of the WAN/LAN ports (i.e. regular LAN on 192.168.0.* and office LAN on 192.168.2.*) and set up some rules for which devices or IP's can talk between the two. This feels like it would be routing rules or possibly a VLAN but I'm not sure. In case anyone is wondering why I'm trying to steal the office DSL, it's so I can increase the effective bandwidth on our client facing network, and we're a Bell Canada customer, meaning it's near impossible to get a simple change done without getting upsold to a bunch of stuff you don't need or want - this doubles as a means of doubling our client facing network capacity without me having to call our ISP helpdesk.
I know I could probably solve the space problem by using a class B subnet but that would mean a lot of downtime implementing that, and I still need a way of allowing the office network to talk to the main network and only a few machines on the main network to talk back to the client network.
I'm more a programmer than a network administrator so forgive me if any of this seems NOOB-ish. Is what I'm trying to do reasonable on this model of router? Also nice to have is if I can have the second class C network segment, for it to have a separate DHCP server.
-Hugh