Comment on Help setting up OpenWRT for extra router
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 months agoTo 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.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 months ago
Nice.
Cameras definitely need some more bandwidth. And their presence has a bigger impact on your privacy than the lightswitch. So you might as well do it right.... I agree.
Me and by brother-in-law also each bought one of the 4 packs of cheap smart plugs with power metering. He had 2 fail after some years. But I guess he was just a bit unlucky. In our experience they're pretty reliable overall. And the 2 failed safe(ly). They just stopped switching and didn't burn down. I'm not 100% convinced, I use a more expensive brand one to make my washing machine smart since it draws a lot of power. But I use the cheap ones for everything else.
I -myself- am a bit reluctant towards cameras and smart speakers that listen in to arbitrary things. But that's just personal preference.