Adding router to existing wireless network to separate networks

Question

I just moved into an apartment complex which offers free wireless internet for all tenants. They use Meraki wireless devices and to my surprise the internet access has been very stable in the short time (1 week) I have been in this apartment.

That's all great for one computer connecting to the internet, but I have two laser printers, three VoIP phones and other networking equipment which needs to be on a LAN. The printers don't even need internet access.

I want to add a router to separate my local network from their huge wireless 'cloud'.

this would allow me to connect to my printers and only hit their wireless network when I wnat to access the internet. I have already been told they could 'whitelist' a MAC address, so they could do that for either my Router or my Wireless Bridge - not sure how that would work. Please advise. Basically I want to know if it works like this:

Wireless/Meraki ))
    )) Linksys WET54G Wireless Bridge 
          -----| WRT54GS Router
                   > Device 1
                   > Device 2
                   > Computer 1
                   > Computer 2

If that little diagram doesn't make sense, I am basically trying to do the following:

1. Connect Linksys WET54G (Wireless Ethernet Bridge) to existing Meraki Wireless Network
2. Connect the cat5 cable from the wireless bridge into the router
3. Connect all of my devices into that router so I can have a lan. If I want to print, I don't have to send a 50MB document over some wireless mesh.

Answer 1

I have done exactly what you are asking for in the past with the WET54G devices (the device without the hub). I put together a separate network with all the devices that we needed on our router. I then configured the WET54G to connect wirelessly to the other network. When this was done, I plugged the WET54G into the internet port of the router I was using and voila... internet access for my network. It was wonderful.

It appears the WET54GS has a buit-in hub so it may be possible to use only the WET54G to create a separate network. The biggest thing you are going to have to watch out for is your IP address that you assign to the router lan DHCP server. For example, if the Meraki system assigns an IP address to the WET54G and Router WAN of 192.168.0.xxx, the router LAN must be set to a different IP range (192.168.1.xxx).

When I setup the system before, I had a IP address for the WET54G (192.168.0.245) manually set in the configuration page and a DHCP address for the router. If you are going to get a mac address white-listed, I would get both MAC addresses on that list.

I hope this helps