What you want is way more complex that SOHO-class routers are capable of. I know there are more complex (and expensive) devices for selling access, but I have no hands-on experience with such.

Yep, you can specify completely separate IP zone and mask for guests.

I do not think I have experience with DIR-655, but I do know that when I last checked DIR-320 was somewhat specialized in this regard and had most flexible guest zone settings, comparing to other D-Link routers of this category.

Sorry, I only had few frantic minutes to go over comments in the morning. My bad. :)

I quite like D-Link hardware lately. It gets some bad feedback online, but I suspect that is mostly form people overloading and overusing it. For normal usage it is quite stable and affordable in my experience.

Anyway, back on topic, I’d agree for a guest zone on a home network it fits well. I have just got a DLink for the first time, always had Netgear before and am impressed so far. My Airport Extreme also has the guest network facility. Too early to tell which is the better option though, if any.

All I need now is some friends to come try it out, LOL :)

Would you be naive enough to assume that Macs have no viruses? :) Google it.

If it was my personal responsibility I’d probably go with dedicated access point and hardware firewall (plus hardware AP manager if selling access) to have more options and accommodate for a large connections possibility.

But some require just “cheap but secure” and guest zone is about perfect fit in such cases.

Out of interest, if you were to provide a guest network as a service would you rely on something like this or would you use a more hardened firewall system to force everything through port 80 and a few choice other ports (to prevent torrents, for example)… or am I being a little over paranoid?

It’s one thing to trust people and another to trust their computers to not be infected with viruses. :)

For businesses it boils down to how is everything set up. Even DIR-320 can be quite precise with schedule, bandwidth limitation and signal power to limit access to small controlled area.

Of course there are risks, but WiFi is desirable service where long waits are involved and guest zone is a good way to make it convenient and secure on low budget.

For businesses it is worse though, as they can get into trouble if people use their network for illegal activity. Not sure now the big boys (starbucks etc) deal with that, but I know there have been several court cases that would certainly put me off providing a wifi network (as a business)