Wireless/Wired Router Solutions for 2 Networks?

DaveTheBrave asks: "I'm currently running a home based business on an el cheapo Netgear wireless router off a broadband cable modem connection. I'm looking to upgrade to something better with more flexibility. My in-laws recently sold their home and will be moving into my home temporarily while they are building another. They have a home based business and my mother-in-law is also notorious for attracting viruses, adware and other nasty stuff on her PC (which I have to routinely clean - hence my need for a better network solution). What is the best/easiest solution to segment and keep separate my network from theirs (both wired and wireless) off of one incoming cable modem? I'm looking for something around or less than $500."

Comments

Linksys WRT54G

[codehead]

You can get two Linksys WRT54Gs for about US$120. Configure one as a router and keep your inlaws in the wireless segment. Configure the other one as a bridge to be your firewalled network zone. If absolutely necessary, you can give them access to the wired segment in the outmost router and still keep them out of the innermost, trusted network.
If you have some spare time reflash the WRTs with OpenWRT for extra flexibility. While you're at it, you might want to score a few extra points with your inlaws by migrating their PCs to Linux, or at least installing Ad-Aware and Spyware S&D ;-)

The way I do it: Linksys WRT54GS

[BRTB]

This thing's a pretty versatile device for under $100. Load OpenWRT on it and you'll have a capable Linux machine/distro suitable for small-network routing and firewalling with iptables, vconfig and brcfg. The ,a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Configur ation#EthernetSwitch">built-in Ethernet switch is 802.1q VLAN capable and configurable at the per-port level, so you can split the network in two and still have the 'router' connected to both and handling Internet traffic with some modifications to the startup scripts and dnsmasq config. Sounds like a fun project, in any case.

Followup to those suggesting WRT54G or GS

[HunterZ]

As a bit of follow-up info to posts suggesting that you invest in a Linksys WRT54G or GS in order to run custom firmware, be aware that the current version of the WRT54G, the v5.0, has half the RAM and flash capacity of previous models. This makes it impossible to flash most custom firmware such as OpenWRT or DD-WRT.

The current version of the WRT54GS, v4.0, is reported to also have half the capacity of previous GS models, which leaves it with as much as older WRT54G models. This means you can get an off-the-shelf GS with the open-source firmware capabilities of old WRT54G models if you're willing to pay $20 more.

Linksys is also supposed to be releasing the WRT54GL, which many have speculated is a relabeled WRT54G v4.0 for $10 more. However, last I checked it was only available in Europe (and by checking I mean both searching the 'net and talking to Linksys support, who ended up referring me to a wholesaler after being unable to find a North American retailer who had them in stock).