Monday, August 16, 2021

Purposfully Offline network, But now I need it online

Wanted to preface this with the fact that I don't have a massive ammount of networking knowledge and just know the basics to get me by in my day job.

I work in a performing arts venue and a few years we installed a simple Ubiquiti network accross our building. This system is entirly independant from the buildings main IT infrastructure and is intended to be that way. Its set up with a few access points in key locations and then a few seperate VLAN's and is used for us to allow peices of equipment to communcate to each other locally (mixing desks, amplifiers, lights etc etc). This network is intentionally "offline" and has no internet connection as the equipment has no need for a connection. However recently i've run into a few issues that it would be nice to fix but my limited knowledge is limiting me from doing so.

Some of the ubiquiti equipment requires updates, which requires an internet connection (as far as I can tell as I can't seem to find a way to do it offline). Now the company is rather small and the IT department (1 person) is often quite overwhelmed with work and it can be incredably laborious to get answers to basic requests, so it would be nice not to involve them. We have a switch on the main IT network close to the USG of the offline network that is connected to a staff VLAN with internet. Is there a simple way I can take this conenction from a LAN port and feed it into the WAN port on the USG to make a connection? if not what alternatives do I have? or what do I need to make it work?

Most likely once the equipment is updated I would then disconnect as its only for this purpose, althought if it did stay online I guess it would allow me to remotely access and manage the network?

TLDR: Can I take a connection from a LAN port of one network to make a coonection to a WAN port of another network?



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