Home network reconfiguring

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...

  1. I would create a different SSID (and a VLAN) for each group.
    Is this an overkill?
    Would you suggest something cleaner/easier?

  2. 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).

  3. 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?

I'd put the TL-WR841ND in charge of the IoTs
Put it on a separate subnet or VLAN, disallow LAN access (I assume the IoTs need internet access).

As for APs I'd probably look for an AX device - https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi. since AC is getting kind of outdated.
But AC devices are cheap, if you buy them used...

1 Like

I never got any feedback on my setup, but network/routing wise, i think it makes sense:

So only the last lart can serve as inspiration to you i guess. Hope its useful

1 Like

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. :smile:
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...

I've looked at the ToH: with no snapshot, just three devices.
And the forum is full of posts about how not stable is OpenWRT at the moment.

Would you suggest to go with one of the available devices and wait for better support?
Is AC really that old? (I'm really out of this world...)

Bought yesterday a WAX202 and installed OpenWRT (snapshot, but it's been dead easy).

1 Like

good man!

there's a WAX202 thread, you might want to keep an eye on it, for future news about the snapshots, bugs, do's and don'ts, and what not ...

1 Like

Unless you'd want to keep running snapshots, I'd recommend to run an 22.03 image, RC6 images are available for the WAX202.

2 Likes

This is really good news!

Just two noob questions:

  1. Can I use a Sysupgrade image over my current snapshot?
  2. Config will be kept (or can I restore a backup taken from snapshot)?

Thank you!

You can.

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.

1 Like

Done.
Easy-peasy task.

Really thank you!

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 10 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.