I just rented a desk in an office. They have a LAN connected to the internet, and it’s shared among everyone in the (small) building.

I have a few network devices I want to connect, but I don’t want them to be visible to everyone on the shared LAN.

I’d like to create my own LAN with all my devices (Laptop, NAS, IP phones) connected to it. But I also want to use the internet connection available in the main LAN.

Below is a diagram of what exists (LAN 1) and what I want to add (LAN 2). Will that work? If not, then how do I do it?


Network diagram


Yes, this will certainly work. The router in LAN 2 will separate the differing network segments, creating a distinctly different LAN.

  • Thanks! So I connect ethernet cable from LAN1’s router or switch to Router 2’s WAN/Internet port? Mar 6 '15 at 8:09
  • 1
    That's normally how it works. The WAN/Internet port - in most cases - is just the NAT'ed interface.
    – Sid
    Mar 8 '15 at 16:22

If you want to seperate LAN2 from LAN1 solution here would be use of VLANs on the switch. LAN1 would be one VLAN and LAN2 second one. I don't know if you are using managed switch.

Another solution would be to use classic routing, however someone has to configure the router in LAN 1 with static routing (or dynamic, but in this situation it would be waste). To restrict the access to your LAN you can then use firewall on your router (you will add rule that traffic from LAN1 clients will be restricted)


I have this setup and it works fine with simple home router. From your routers perspective, lan1 is the same as the Internet. Where it gets trickier, is if something in lan1 as to enter lan2, like printer advertisement or you want network discovery to browse you co-workers fileshare.

  • Thanks. I don’t want to share anything with LAN 1 except the internet connection. So it’ll work if I connect LAN 1’s router or switch to `Router 2’s WAN/Internet port? Mar 6 '15 at 8:14
  • Pretty much yes. You will likely need to make sure that the IP range on the two lans are different as most NAT implementations can't handle overlapping IPs on the LAN and WAN sides. Devices on LAN2 will be able to connect to devices on LAN1 but not vice-versa. Jan 11 '16 at 15:00

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