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I have an Asus WL-520GU wireless router connected to a cable modem that I use for wireless internet access in my apartment. I would like to set it up so that it provides two SSIDs: one secured and password-protected for my regular use, and a "guest" SSID that's unsecured but throttled to, say, 10% of the available bandwidth. What is the most straightforward way to do this?

I've been looking into DD-WRT and Tomato, both of which support my router. DD-WRT supports setting up multiple SSIDs using the GUI, but I don't know if it's possible to limit the bandwidth of each SSID independently; point #12 in this FAQ thread says it's not possible to limit by day or by MAC address, which is discouraging but not conclusive. Tomato allows bandwidth limits in its QoS settings, going by the screenshot here, but multiple SSID support is still experimental and it doesn't look like it will work with the encryption settings or bandwidth limits in the GUI.

I'd like to know a good way to do this which gives me the fewest opportunities for screwing up. I'm no stranger to the command line, if that turns out to be what's necessary, but if so, please explain what the commands are doing because I don't have a good mental model of what needs to happen to set this up.

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  • This is something I would like to know too.
    – Devid
    Apr 4, 2015 at 12:21

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You should go with DD-WRT.

  • Install DD-WRT on your router and make sure that you have QoS options. If so, you can follow the tutorials to set up multiple SSIDs. Assign each SSID to a different subnet. This is the magic ... because we can assign QoS based on IP address.

  • Once you have your SSIDs created, follow the tutorials to set up QoS. Make sure to choose WAN and not WLAN & LAN. There is a known bug you will need to work around with a custom firewall script.

  • Follow the directions to add your private subnet to the QoS list. Assign it a priority of "Premium" (the public subnet traffic will automatically be assigned "Standard").

  • Save your changes and reboot when finished to avoid nasty config bugs.

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  • This looks like a good answer! I'll try it out this weekend and accept it if it works.
    – user112640
    Jun 15, 2012 at 23:16
  • Unfortunately I haven't found the time to try it out yet. That's no fault of yours, of course, so you get the bounty, and I'll give you the check mark as well once I get it to work. :)
    – user112640
    Jun 20, 2012 at 4:58
  • This did not work for me.
    – Tyler Wall
    Dec 28, 2012 at 20:43

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