As submitted to http://acanac.org/blogs/geek/

If you're an avid reader, you probably already know that I am a big fan of SmoothWall Express.  I currently run version 3.0 and it serves as a multi-purpose appliance in my home network.  It's a router, a firewall, a DNS manager, an intrusion detection system (IDS), and it's a lot of fun.  Diving back into the Linux world after so many years away was challenging, but with huge help from the the community forums over at http://smoothwall.org - it couldn't have been any  easier.

I run what's called a red-green-orange-purple network.  Exciting isn't it?  Take a look at the image below for a little more detail and explanation.  I grabbed this image from http://www.linux-tip.net.  Basically the networks are as follows:

• Red - Incoming Internet connection - basically my DSL modem
• Green - Standard internal network for all of the computers and devices (and a few servers)
• Orange - DMZ Server network managing mail and web servers
• Purple - Wireless segregated network

In case it wasn't clear, each colour coded network runs on it's own subnet and is isolated from the others.  Each colour is also an individual nic in the server.  Obviously this greatly improves the security of my home network.  This weekend I set out to configure the purple network that was never set up properly.  Totally my fault :)

So, for my purple setup I used a D-Link DL-524+ wireless-g router.  In order to do this, you have to configure it to run in wireless access point (WAP) mode.  All you have to do is set the router to a static IP within the subnet and turn off DHCP within the router.  Please note that you have to have DHCP enabled on the SmoothWall purple interface for this to work.  To select your new router/WAP IP, look at the gateway address.  If your gateway (purple network) is something like 192.168.30.1, then your WAP IP should be something like 192.168.30.55.  If you are really stuck with this part, visit the forums and do a bit more reading.  In my case, the problem I had with my setup is that I had the WAP plugged into the wrong nic on the SmoothWall computer.  That was my stupid mistake for the day!

Since then I have slept much better knowing that my easily cracked wireless (does secure wireless really exist?) is isolated from the rest of my network.