Wireless Router in Business Network

[Lazerblade]

Hello guys. Figured since most of you are a bit more experienced with this I'd toss the question out to you and see if anyone can come up with a solution for me.

As some of you may recall, I work in a small business office that handles a lot of digital files. Sometimes we have clients that drop by with laptops and they need to drop off files. I brought in one of my older routers, with wireless G, to allow wireless connections (since our conference room doesn't have a wired outlet and I'd rather not wire one in). Thus far I've configured the router to allow wireless connections pretty much all over the building. However, our main network uses a multi-port hub for internal traffic (Linksys SR2024 w/ Asante switches(?)).

Anyway, the router is connected to one of the LAN outlets in one of the offices. Connecting wirelessly thus far hasn't given me access to our servers. I can get my email and surf the internet, but only have access to other computers connected to the router.

My request is this- is there a way to configure the router so that I can see other computers on our hub/switch network, access servers for transferring files (or retrieving), and whatnot? I also have a "guest" connection set up on the router. Can I limit access to the servers through the router, so guests cannot see our entire network but maybe have access to a single "dump" folder? Right now the biggest issue is getting network access through the router. I can always set up a special folder with password protection once this is accomplished.

On a side note, I tried connecting the network cable to one of the "internal" lines instead of the WAN line on the router, and that didn't work, but maybe I needed to configure something first.

So, let's see who can solve this problem first, eh?

[Autoload]

You'de have to divulge some more information around the architechture of your network, but right off the bat my guess would be a firewall configuration, IP conflicts with devices on teh wireless network, and/or an unknown route on the wireless device.

What can you share about the internal design of the network such as the IP ranges of both the wired and wireless networks?

[Lazerblade]

I'll have to gather that information when I get in next week. I'm on vacation right now. All I know for sure is that the router itself doesn't seem to look for a network through the WAN port, just the connected LAN and wireless devices. Is this due to the NAT? Would disabling the NAT and simply making sure all folders on the remaining network are passworded be enough security? Like I said, I have the wireless network set up for dual-access- via authorized user or guest. I can shut down the wireless router every night since there are typically only 2 devices connecting to it and only during business hours, and both devices have hard-wire access as well. The building is located out in the middle of nowhere with only 2 businesses nearby, neither of which would pose much of a threat to us since neither competes with our business. Plus, wouldn't the password protection (WPA2) be enough? I don't want to open us up to potential wireless leeches, and I want to keep our files secure, but I want the convenience of allowing visitors to drop off files via wireless connection when they stop by and have that capability.

[Autoload]

I could guess it's a NAT problem, or a internal routing issue, or IP conflict, or gateway problem, or etc...

However, I really can't answer your questions until you show your network architecture, devices, and IP distribution.