I have a small office, used one day a week, that does not have internet, so everyone connects using their phone as hot spots. We have a printer everyone needs to share. I want to set up the printer on a wired network (small unmanaged switch) but still be able to use wireless for internet. How can I set this up to use both connections, and not have to change adapter settings for everyone each week?
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This is possible. I assume you only use the wired network when the internet is down. You will probably want to put a DHCP on the wired network to let it be more scalable and user-friendly. However, you need to make sure that the DHCP server does not hand out DHCP Option 3, which is the router or default gateway as described here. If you miss that, clients try to reach the internet via the wired connection, as wired networks are generally preferred over wireless links. Nevertheless, that would not be possible or not what you actually want.
A DHCP server can come in two different shapes.
- A physical device like a router, a managed switch or a dedicated server machine
- A software component installable on any machine
The most convenient way in your case would be to have a tiny embedded computer like a Raspberry PI to run the DHCP service. Then every body could just connect their device and would be ready to go. In case you choose a router or any kind of network device you should make sure that it allows to exempt on the DHCP Option 3 because it is the default to have it included and there might not be an opt-out.
In case there are no spare ports on the switch to connect a device that performs DHCP, the only way I see to not change network adapter settings on all the devices is to run a DHCP server on one of the devices plugged in. Let's say you utilize a tool like TFTP32 by Philippe Jounin and configure it to your needs. When you come to the office you would set your network adapter to static IP (which is obligatory to run such a server) and then start the DHCP server program. Right after that every one else can connect their devices to the switch. When connecting to another cabled network you probably need to reconfigure your network card to act as a DHCP client. In addition you need to make sure to stop the DHCP server program when connected to other networks as it is most likely that two DHCP servers in one network cause serious problems.
The second approach is not as plug and play as the first, but the number of network adapters that need to be configured can be decreased to just one.
Kevin K.
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