Hi everybody,
my home network has changed a lot in the last two years: added home automation, media server, NAS, lot of IoT devices and the kids are growing so they'll use a device in no time...
Thus I'm re-designing the whole LAN.
I'll try to be as concise as possible, hope not to be too obnoxious...
Current setup is: WAN: FTTC - 80/20 Mbps Router: WRT3200ACM/OpenWRT AP: TL-WR841NDv9/DD-WRT (really old stuff, it sucks, I can only have 2.4GHz at 1st floor) SSIDs:
Main (2.4Ghz)
Main_5 (5 Ghz)
Guest (5 GHz)
I have no idea of the best practices to design a network but here my idea.
I could group my devices (current and future) in these classes:
IoT devices, some with ESP8266 [no internet]
Ip cameras [some may need internet]
Vendor specific devices (voice assistants, heating system net bridge, Fire TV...) [internet]
Servers (some publicly exposed) [internet]
Personal clients (notebooks, smartphones) [internet]
Kids clients [filtered internet]
Guest clients [internet]
So...
I would create a different SSID (and a VLAN) for each group.
Is this an overkill?
Would you suggest something cleaner/easier?
Even though I could have a FTTH to the end of the year, I would keep the WRT3200ACM as I read that it's able to manage a gigabit connection.
I would turn off its wifi as it's giving me some trouble (maybe for known issue with ESP8266 clients).
I would, obviously, change the AP with two new for ground floor and first floor.
If possible, I'd prefer an AP with good OpenWRT but with the possibility to take my time with the stock firmware while organizing and testing the network.
By now, I have two candidates: TP-Link EAP245 and TP-Link RE650. TP-Link EAP245 seems to have some issue with OpenWRT but maybe there's a solution. It's a business grade AP does this bring any advantage? TP-Link RE650 seems to have better processors, a very good OpenWRT support and it costs less here in EU but I don't know if stock firmware can give what I need (this is just a desiderata, I could immediately jump on OpenWRT).
Is there any consideration I could take before choosing? Some better device at the same, cheap, price?
Unfortunately, the wifi signal can't quite pass through the floor, so at the first floor I'd need the TL-WR841ND and a second AP for the 5 GHz.
Maybe I could install just one new AP on first floor, giving 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz, and move the TL-WR841ND to the ground floor, near the WRT3200ACM on which I could keep the 5 GHz and turn off just the bugged 2.4...
Now I know I'm not alone and it's not so "crazy" to create a lot of separated VLAN.
On Azure there's the habit of putting each machine on its own VLAN but I thought it was just a "cloud thing".
I'm a little more confident on my future project...
No. Even though differences might be tiny at this point, never keep configs when migrating from snapshot images to stable releases (which are basically always an older codebase). It will take you more time to find out what's wrong with your old settings than to reconfigure.
The other way around (from stable to snapshots) usually is not a problem. Migration mechanisms never take downgrades into account; only upgrades.