HG659

Context: My friends and I have a big villa that we kind of split into 10 individual "apartments". Half of it is occupied by us and the rest are occupied by people we don’t personally know. There's a 1 Gbps Fiber connection to the villa. The main router is an Orbi RBR50 and there's a satellite RBS50 connected to it (wireless backhaul) to give the first floor apartments WiFi/Ethernet. There's a few apartments outside the main building which can't get WiFi so we ran an ethernet cable from the main Orbi to each apartment. When more people wanted their own WiFi and we ran out of port on the Orbi, we connected an old Huawei router (model HG659) to the Orbi, set it to AP mode and ran more ethernet cables from it to individual apartments. At the end of these cables people connect their own routers so they have their own private WiFi and control the name, password, etc. Each apartment connects at max like 4 devices so the whole network in total has less than 60 devices. Problem: So recently we had issues with the internet going out randomly and after a lot of troubleshooting and googling we came to the conclusion that some people's personal routers were acting as the DCHP server for devices connected to other people's personal routers somehow? The temporary fix we did right now is going to everyone's apartment and setting their router to AP mode and let only the Orbi handle DHCP. Anyway this doesn't seem like a permanent fix and breaks when people reset their routers or new people move in. So after some research and a discussion with my friend ChatGPT I've come to ask the experts here if my plan makes sense. Plan: Since we don't want to go through the hassle of setting router's to AP mode any time there's a change, we want to get a Managed Switch. We would connect this to the Fiber Gateway thing (the same thing that gives the Orbi its internet) and connect all the private routers to the switch and get rid of the Huawei router. The important part seems to be "DHCP Snooping" to make the switch ignore other people's routers trying to be DHCP servers for network's outside their own by setting only the gateway as an unprotected port with the rest as protected. The Orbi and its satellite will still be used for the people inside the main building who dont want to get their own router. Questions: 1. Since we barely break even on the rent, we want to get something cheap. Would 100 USD budget be enough for something like this? Will most probably get something used. 2. To get the DHCP snooping part, we would have to specifically get an "L2" Managed switch, correct? Any budget friendly recommendations for these? I've seen "TP-Link TL-SG108E" mentioned many times in best budget managed switches but from what I can see it does not have this feature. 3. There's a few personal routers connected via Ethernet to the Orbi Satellite upstairs. Since we plan on having the switch downstairs with the main Orbi, what can we do about the upstairs routers? 1. Do we get another smaller switch (the same L2 thing I assume) just for upstairs? Or get longer cables and connect them to the switch downstairs (this would be much harder because 2 of these cables actually go through the wall and ceiling to the apartments downstairs in the back of the villa.. it was shorter this way than from downstairs directly) 2. If we do get another switch, is it ok to just connect it to the Orbi Satellite for internet? Sorry for the long post, if there's a completely different way to do this better, suggestions are welcome. Thanks :)