Everyone was kind enough to ram my brain chock full of knowledge about switches and I came away feeling like I can explain it to other people. (please don’t test me on this, I’ll fail)

But now I’m trying to figure out how I want my network to look and so it’s best I ask the people smarter than me that actually understand what I’m trying to do.

My house is an average sized, end of terrace in a big city and so while I can get decent Internet speeds, I get lots of WiFi signal congestion with neighbours, buildings, etc.

In my present router, which I really need to replace, I have my NAS and cable box plugged in via Ethernet, everything else is connected via WiFi. That’s a bunch of phones, a couple laptops, and a couple Raspberry Pi’s (including my one with all my home services, like Home Assistant and my Pi-Hole).

The design I’m cooking up, is that my NAS would be on a virtual LAN with no direct access to the Internet, my Raspberry Pis would have Internet access. I don’t need to worry about my smart home devices having Internet access since they’re all Zigbee devices. But I plan to switch my cable box to an IPTV box and I’m also wanting to get a video doorbell and security camera for the garden, so that’s at least three virtual local area networks. Four if I add a guest network.

My questions are really simple ones and you’re probably gonna laugh at how stupid they are… can I do this all with a single switch? Do I need a separate access points for each VLAN or can I have multiple vLANs on a single AP? How many ports should I be looking at on my switch? Would four be enough for my set-up? Also managed is best right?

  • sabreW4K3OPEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    I don’t know if it was because it’s 420, but your reply was like the clouds opening and an angel stepping out. Thank you so so so so much. I spent the hour after you posted this looking at Ubiquiti switches and access points and decided on the 8 Lite and 6+, but then I watched the reviews and realised that they’re cloud managed and that kinda bothers me, I want to be able to control my devices no matter what and the auto updating of firmware is also concerning. But the thing is, all the locally managed switches I’ve seen pale in comparison in regards to UI when compared to UniFi, so I think I’m going to have to spend a bit of time learning about the pros and cons of cloud managed versus locally managed and if there’s anything that compares.

    • August27th@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      I’m the same way, I don’t do any of the cloud stuff. I run the MGMT software in a docker container, and when it asks to hook up the cloud, I just skip it. It means I have to back up the config by hand, but I’m ok with that. I also turn the auto update off in the config. I am pretty sure the updating needs the MGMT software to be running all the time anyway, but I don’t keep that going, I just shut it down when I’m done configuring things. I don’t use any of their routers, maybe those need cloud stuff?

      You know what? Just try downloading their management software right now, it’s free, and see if you can get into the config portion without signing up for their cloud stuff. I’d try it with the latest version of their software myself (I haven’t updated in a while), but I’m not near my gear right now.

      • sabreW4K3OPEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        Thank you again. This has been a super fruitful conversation. I guess I’ve found my switch and AP.

        • August27th@lemmy.caEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          No problem! Have fun with your VLANs and WAP. It’s the most stable Wi-Fi I’ve ever owned. I used to have to reboot my ISP Wi-Fi router once a month or so because it would just stop serving Wi-Fi for no reason. I’ve never had to reboot my ubiquiti gear ever for that reason, and it’s been years.

          Let us know what you pick for a router when you get there.

          • sabreW4K3OPEnglish
            2·
            2 months ago

            Don’t get me started on the router. I really want an ARM router and was dead set on a NanoPi but got swayed by the Banana Pi BPi-R4, but I’ve been reading the support thread on the OpenWRT forums and things aren’t where they need to be yet. Luckily I can sort out everything else first and leave the router for last, if the worse comes to the worst, I’ll just get an n100 machine.

            • August27th@lemmy.caEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              Nice. I dunno if I’d do ARM again for me personally, I always found the throughput lacking, but I suppose there’s newer faster stuff now, and it’s hard to complain about the low power consumption.

              If you have any old x86 gear laying around, or even the means to make a VM, consider installing and playing around with pfSense or opnSense. I suppose your goal may be to get into the OpenWrt ecosystem and tinker in there, which I totally get.

              For me, I’ve taken to shying away from an “everything device” that can be a router and NAS and server and whatever else device (not to say that’s your intent with OpenWrt), and instead choosing something that is focused on the networking. Do one job and do it well, kinda thing. For instance my spouse would be mad if a video call with friends was jittery because the router was busy transcoding video from its media server to play a show on the TV. Also if the device gives up the ghost years down the line, you don’t have to find some unicorn hardware in a hurry that can do 5 different things; you can just get a router and drop it in. Food for thought.