Captive Portal configuration with VLAN

ogdenmd01 · ‎02-02-2016

First, I apologize for being so inexperienced as to even have to ask a question like this...

I have a small medical practice. I am trying to set up Guest internet access for my patients. I use these same Access Points for my secure wireless access to the EMR from within the patient rooms. Of necessity, the Guests need to be isolated from my internal domain network.

I am using three Cisco WAP 371 dual band radios. Each is connected to a separate unmanaged gigabit switch. Each of those switches is connected to a rack-mounted unmanaged gigabit switch that interconnects my domain server, my EMR server (Electronic Medical Record), and my Laboratory Information Systems server (LIS). My domain server is the DHCP server and firewall. It connects through a Cisco DPC3941B broadband Modem to the internet.

I don't understand the concept of VLANs and how to implement a VLAN for traffic isolation directly to the internet.

Do I need to purchase different switches? Should I consider a completely different configuration?

Advice? Recommendations?

Thanks in advance.

Philip D'Ath · ‎02-03-2016

Because your area is not networking I'm wondering if it might be easiest to get an extra [separate] internet circuit, and a separate access point that plugs into this circuit, for your guests.

Then the two networks are 100% separate, and no mistake by any human could result in a security breach (as long as no one plugs the the two systems into each other).