Home Server with Multiple Subnets

I may be a little out of the norm with Home Server, but I have a home network with 2 subnets.  The reason is because I run a Sonicwall as my home router.  The wired LAN runs in 192.168.1.x and the wireless WLAN runs in 192.168.2.x .  This allows me to do guest wireless, and quite frankly, a business class router such as a Sonicwall just provides much more reliability, which is very important to me.

Ok, so now for how I got my WLAN clients to access the home server.  First of all, Home Server has a dynamic IP address, so because I’m a server guy, I just changed it to a static IP address on the LAN for the Sonicwall.  Next I went into the Windows Firewall on the Home Server

For each exception, I needed to verify that it allowed more than the Class-C subnet through the firewall.  I decided for simplicity, it was easier to change it from a class-C to a class-B subnet allowance (i.e. instead of 192.168.1.x through the firewall, it allows 192.168.x.x through the firewall).  This is slightly less secure, but it’s my home, and I have a pretty good WPA key on my wireless network.

Here are the steps to change each exception:

1. Select an Exception, you’ll have to do this for all exceptions that are scoped to My Network (subnet) only, and choose Edit.
2. On the Change Scope page, select Custom List, and place your cursor in the box
3. For the subnet, type the static IP address of the server followed by a “/” and then the subnet for class-B networks (e.g. “192.168.1.2/255.255.0.0”) and choose OK.

That’s one exception that allows the WLAN clients into the home server.  Now go through all the exceptions and make this change, the WLAN clients just “popped” online without making a change on the client side.