While trying to set up the WLAN, I couldn’t connect to the AP, it said no internet access, and I couldn’t connect to the Pi, or ping any device from it.
Comment on Help setting up OpenWRT for extra router
taaz@biglemmowski.win 4 months ago
How did you fail?
VLANs (Virtual LANs) are for isolating devices from each other (while still being plugged to the “LAN” ports of the same router).
VitabytesDev@feddit.nl 4 months ago
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 months ago
Can't you find something like a guide or walktrough? I can't believe you're the first person using a RasPi as an access point...
I mean I would love to help. But it's a bit difficult without seeing the situation. And "I can't connect to anything" isn't exactly detailed enough to lead me to any conclusions. There are a lot of moving parts in a router, the wifi itself, DHCP, routing, firewall, ...
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 months ago
To add a bit: With VLANs you can have several 'virtual' cables inside of a real (physical) cable. You probably don't need it in a home setup, I'm not sure. It's for use cases like you just have one ethernet port or one cable running through the wall, but you need two (or more) entirely separate networks on the other side. Like the telephone network or the seperate server network along with the normal network, all over one cable. It works by tagging all the network packets. In the end it's just a number that gets added to the packets and the other side knows how to handle the packets with those additional numbers attached to them. And it can send them out through different ports again.
Mountain_Mike_420@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
I don’t think I am special but I have a few vlans setup. May main concern is using cheap “smart” devices from china and isolating anything they see or do to their own private network.
I also have a vlan setup for my guest network because I let my neighbors use it and wouldn’t want them exploring my nas.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 months ago
That's a bit more elaborate then 'usual'. But not unheard of. I spoke to some people here on Lemmy who have put their cheap IoT devices on a separate Wifi. And guest networks are fairly common. IMHO those should be easier to set up on OpenWRT.
Regarding the cheap 'chinesium' smart devices: I hope you're aware of projects like Tasmota, ESPHome and OpenBeken... I'm not that much into making everything smart, but I also have some smart sockets, LED strips and stuff. I had some luck with the first devices I bought and after that I payed attention to just buy things where I could replace the firmware. So for me they all communicate with my own MQTT broker and Home Assistant directly, and there isn't any firmware on them any mor that'd talk to the china cloud.
Mountain_Mike_420@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
Wow thanks. I’ll look into it. I bought a 4 pack of smart plugs for $25 and figured there had to be a catch. But 4 years later they are still working fine. Nothing I use them for is mission critical or high amperage but I’m happy.
I also have 4 levitation smart switches which I’m not as worried about them but still keep them on the vlan.
Besides those I have a cheap smart ir transmitter, and a google nest smart speaker. About to add 2 WiFi cameras to the vlan, so we will have to see how the performance works out.