I needed a little help configuring guest network. Apologies in advance, super novice. I have two Linksys MR8300 and one is a main router and the Access Point. There's also two ZyXEL GS1900-8 Switches that don't have any configuration on them, so I think they can be considered unmanaged switches(...?). I have included a network diagram (I'm sure it is not the proper way of making it; please excuse).
Now "connecting" the network between the AP and the main router so that all the devices on either regular network can talk to each other was easy because of the instructions, but (if I'm not wrong) the way that the guest network is set up is not the same. I would like the AP guest network to act as a dumb AP for the guest network on the main router. I'm not sure how to do this even after several videos, searching this forum, reddit, etc.
You need to create two VLANs, one for each network, and then trunk them on the interface from the main router that connects to the switch, and the same again on the AP. The guest interface on the secondary router is not acting as a dumb AP, you should also change that.
it is smart managed switch
to be honest, i have no experience with this model, but some other "smart / cheap" managed switches strip vlan tagging when they are in default/factory state
so, it is best to learn how to set them up properly for vlan trunks
as @eduperez state, you need to create two vlans (minimum) and, from my experience, these cheap switches could not have management interface outside of vlan1 (native vlan) so, basicaly, you will end with 3 vlans
Thank you for your suggestions! As someone with no experience in creating VLANs, I can vaguely understand what needs to be done, but I can't create it in practice. Is it possible to do this through the LuCI interface?
Yes, this can be done on the web interface, it is not very complicated, but I do not know how to guide you step by step, without having the same device or trashing my own configuration...
I can try to guide you through the concepts, however.
The first step would be to confirm that you are able to reconfigure the switches, and wether you have other devices connected to them. Would you like to have LAN and GUEST ports on them?
No worries and thanks, if it helps to know the switches and the routers are both running OpenWRT 22.03.5.
This is also the data sheet for the switch and it says that I can VLAN:
This is also the data sheet for the router and it says that I can VLAN:
So to answer these to the best of my knowledge:
The first step would be to confirm that you are able to reconfigure the switches, - Yes, based on the techdata
and wether you have other devices connected to them. - Yes, the routers and switches are connected to each other so are other servers and IoT devices
Would you like to have LAN and GUEST ports on them? - Yes, that would be great. I would prefer that I have the ability to separate devices based on which ports they are plugged into.
So, the ideal scenario would be to have two cables (one for each network) from the main router to each switch and to the secondary router. On the switches, each cable would be connected to one part of the ports; on the secondary router, each cable would be connected to a wireless interface.
Instead of using several cables, we use several VLANs over the same physical cable; the method to separate the traffic is to tagg packets with a different ID, and putting several VLANs on the same cable is called trunking.
On the main router, the port connected to the first switch will carry tagged traffic for both the LAN and GUEST networks; the other ports will carry untagged traffic for either of both. On the first switch, the ports connected to the main router and the second switch will also carry tagged traffic for both networks, and the other ports will carry untagged traffic for either of both. On the second switch, the configuration will be the same, with one cable connected to the first switch and other to the secondary router.
So far, this is the theory... next comes the practical implementation.
@eduperez I think that sounds good (although frankly I'm not sure I follow; would be helpful to have a diagram). As long as it doesn't require two cables going between the two switches then its good. The ethernet cable going between the switches is a single CAT 6 cable in the wall.
@theMan I appreciate the help and I usually am pretty diligent about upgrading the equipment, but it seems that you can't keep your config going forward (I might be wrong). according to this page: https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/mr8300
Do not try to restore any previous 22.03 config file, it isn't compatible. The device now runs with DSA and need to be configured from scratch (meanwhile advanced users may know how to manually restore some settings). Backup your settings.
@robot.unsalted No, there will not be more that one (physical) cable between each device, that is the point of VLANs. The configuration changes substantially after moving to DSA, even if the concepts remain the same; I would not waste your time doing it on a pre-DSA config, if you are planning to upgrade to a DSA config soon.
