A lot of managed switches, a lot of ethernet cable, maybe some point-to-point WiFi connections for longer distances, and local DNS and DHCP servers that have failovers for redundancy. You technically don’t need a router because routers are for connecting different networks, and if it’s not connected to the internet, as long as you have local DHCP and DNS, you’re kind of golden for local services. You can even have internal TLS for local security. I do that with Caddy, it’s dead simple, and the certificates are locally generated for a 10 year period. I’m connected to the internet but I don’t expose any of these services to the internet, just my local network.
With a little more work, you could set up a VoIP server too so people could connect their phones that don’t have cellular service and use a VoIP app to be able to call anyone in the neighborhood by their VoIP number.
How do air-gapped LANs that span neighborhoods work?
A lot of managed switches, a lot of ethernet cable, maybe some point-to-point WiFi connections for longer distances, and local DNS and DHCP servers that have failovers for redundancy. You technically don’t need a router because routers are for connecting different networks, and if it’s not connected to the internet, as long as you have local DHCP and DNS, you’re kind of golden for local services. You can even have internal TLS for local security. I do that with Caddy, it’s dead simple, and the certificates are locally generated for a 10 year period. I’m connected to the internet but I don’t expose any of these services to the internet, just my local network.
With a little more work, you could set up a VoIP server too so people could connect their phones that don’t have cellular service and use a VoIP app to be able to call anyone in the neighborhood by their VoIP number.