Plug and play wireless router???

Hi everyone. I am a realtor and I'm planning on offering free wifi access at all of my open houses. I'm looking for a router where I could bring it in the day of the open house, plug it into one of the ports on my clients main router, and have a wireless network ready to go - without even turning on their home computer. Is this possible?

What would be even better is if I could install this router on my home computer and create a network name/password and when I bring it to the open house - those settings still work.

Thanks for your help!

 

Most any wireless router should do what you want. They hold on to their config after you set them up. Just set it up to connect via DHCP and you're gold

 

Thanks Sxooter. Any recommendations for under $80, easy to set up and compact? Also, will there be any issue if I am plugging into the back of their wireless router? Thanks!

 

The 3 routers that get the most recommendations here are the Netgeat WNR3500L, the TP-Link TL-WR1043ND and the Asus RT-N56U. I own a WNR3500L and am very happy with it. It's a square little box that should pack easily for on the road deployment. All hover in the $60 to $80 range.

 

To avoid compromising any of your clients machines, you should plan on UNPLUGGING your customers router and putting yours in place on the dsl/cable modem. Don't piggyback on their router. Bad.

Otherwise, through your router, you are likely going to be exposing your clients networks to anyone who comes along. You'll be personally / professionally liable for damages.

Don't assume that your clients home machines/devices are turned off when they aren't home. My machines and devices are on 24/7 and I don't want them turned off.

At the end of the showing, just plug things back in as you found them.

 

If you plug the router into the customer's router, and it uses DHCP to configure, the machines on the other side of that router should pretty much not be visible to the machines connecting to your router.

 

you can pray that the possibility of multiple layers of dhcp and router firmware might provide some protection or depend on the probability that an unplugged cable will in fact provide protection.

your choice.

 

^ This.

In order to avoid any sort of liability, I would purchase a MiFi device from a cellular provider and use that to go to your open houses. They can support up to 5 devices connected at the same time, which should be more than enough for an open house. You can have it plugged in or just keep it in your shirt pocket and be a roving hotspot.

Verizon has a 4G LTE MiFi for $30 with a 2-year contract.

 

I have one of their 3G MIFI adapters for work. They work well enough, but they are painfully slow, and usually with a relatively small cap in the 2G range. But for what the OP is wanting to do, it's likely the best solution, as it doesn't rely on the homeowner having functioning internet or mixing the two networks etc.

Note that a router plugged in to configure in DHCP mode, will NOT move traffic between the two networks, because they're both on unroutable network IPs by default (i.e. 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x) and it won't move traffic past the gateway with those IPs.

 

Thanks for all of the input. You will all probably flame me but I ended up buying an open box Apple airport express from best buy - $90. In my experience, i've been really happy with apple products being easy to use and just working... I think I will plan on unplugging their home computers and going straight to the modem. Is there any way that this would negatively impact their home network? I can't imagine so, but that is why i'm asking all of you. Thanks for your help and the good info.

Re MiFi - that would defeat the purpose. Anyone on a smart phone(the people who will want to use this wifi) will have 3g access - the point is to give people full wiFi access, which is what I always want. Also, I do a lot of business in the Oakland hills were cell coverage is often spotty.

Thanks again!
Aaron

 

The mifi will give them full access, but they'll have to put in a wireless key. the only real issue with letting them use your homeowner's access is a liability issue should they be filesharing or downloading illegal stuff etc. And yea, the coverage of mifi can be REAL spotty. My favorite steakhouse is lucky to get me 10k/s access speeds with mifi.

 

Don't go turning off your customers machines without advance permission.......

Unplugging their router and temp-substituting your own should be good enough.

Assuming you've secured advance permission.......