Best way to implement

[Trickyrick]

I'm going to share my internet with my neighbor.  We already have a cat 5 cable between the two homes.  We each have accounts with Google Home (speaker) and a smart home hub for smart home devices.  We don't want to be able to see each other's devices or speakers in the respective apps.
I was thinking my router will be 192.168.4.1 and Ill install a router next door with 192.168.6.1.  Would that do it
Thanks

[deanwebb]

First question - does your neighbor know you're sharing internet?

Looks like there's awareness, so I'll go forward with the discussion. The Internet will all come into one home and meet up with a router there. From that point, it can be divided and subdivided as needed by additional devices. I have my Internet come into a switch that runs my office network on 192.168.1.0 and a Google mesh wireless that hands out IPs on 192.168.68.0 range for my family. A single home router that has VLAN capability should do the trick, as most can secure things to where one network does not interact with the other, but both use an Internet connection. Since 2020, devices like these for remote workers have become quite popular.

[Trickyrick]

yes they know we are going to split the internet bill (Its my sister)
Ok then what I said should work.
I would also like to share a harddrive that is plugged into my router how could I do that

[deanwebb]

Glad you're on the right track! Hope the streaming services don't try to double-charge you!

For the hard drive plugged into the router, there should be instructions with the device - what is the make/model of the drive? If the router needs a setting, we'd need to see the make/model of the router, as well.

[Trickyrick]

I dont see how the streaming service would know that we are sharing as we still would be on the same WAN address.
I can share the drive and see it but if I seperate the two 192.168.4 and 192.168.5
The other router wont be able to see the drive

[deanwebb]

This is where I'd stand on a one-router solution that can split VLANs. Short of setting up firewall rules to permit traffic from one network to the other in a limited fashion, there's no way to share the drive if it is exclusive to one router's network.

[Trickyrick]

Thanks
I have a Linksys MR9000 and Ive found out that it does not support VLANS.  Ill have to stick with the differnt LAN IPs for now