I have an openwrt dir-878 router with VLANs configured. The openwrt router is great except the hardware is 4+1 ports. I want to feed in x4 dumb AP and plug in a few devices directly into it.
I have run out of ports. Normally I would use any old switch or hub. I don't want to do any configuration on the extension hub. I want the new hub to be dumb but allow VLAN L3 and L2 traffic to flow through without any issues.
Any cheap hardware suggestions? Do I need a L2 or L3 switch? Is the only cheap option Banana Pi BPI-R3?
You really don't want to use an ethernet hub. You do need a switch.
That will most likely not work. You can't predict what a dumb switch might do with your VLAN.
I don't think your idea is realisable without a managed switch (which of course has to be configured).
There's an good explanation from @psherman.
I will have a much of dir-878 dumb AP using VLANs to push traffic to the main smart AP. I want to put all the dumb AP on a "switch" and have the combined VLANs traffic go through the "switch" to the smart AP. That means I have only used 1+1 NICs.
Do I want L2 or L2+ or smart managed L2 or L3 as the extended ports switch?
...second hand markets for rather little money (e.g. from the ZyXEL gs1900 series of switches, which may start around 15-25 EUR used (pretty much independent of the port count, ranging from 8 to 52...@slh mentioned these. Thoughts?
Also will a banana pi work here? I assume since it is openwrt it will....
But fundamentally, a managed switch (i.e. VLAN aware) is required if you're going to send VLANs through any external switch devices.
As stated earlier -- do not even consider a hub. Unless you're dealing with really really old hardware, it's rare to find an actual hub... ethernet switches became the standard maybe 15 years ago or more. Hubs are incredibly inefficient and only support half-duplex operation at 10Mbps or 100Mbps. There are no gigabit hubs, only switches (by requirement of the gigabit standards).
A managed switch will required configuration. It doesn't need to be complicated, though.
You only need a managed L2 switch. An L3 switch would be much more expensive and overkill for your needs.
Not sure why you're looking at a router instead of just managed switches.
Low end managed switches start at around $25 USD. I'd recommend avoiding the cheapest models from TP-Link and Netgear. The next level up are usually good, as are offerings from other vendors like Zyxel and a large number of other vendors.
While you should never pass VLANs through an unmanaged switch, you might be able to achieve a physical topology that doesn't require managed switches if you can make it such that all ports on the switch pass just a single network. Then, the other ports on the router can be used for VLANs. It really depends on how many of the ports need to carry multiple networks/VLANs.
Yes, it appears to be. I don't know much about the D-Link switches, but it checks all the boxes you need for VLANs.
The important bit is "managed" or "smart" switch. These mean that you can configure them and that they are VLAN aware.
L2 encompasses unmanaged and managed switches -- L2 is the switching layer.
L3 is routing... advanced/high-end managed switches have the ability to do real routing -- this is useful if you are a business or have a high volume of inter-vlan traffic that would otherwise saturate your normal router. For most normal home users, L3 is way overkill.
L2+ sits between the L2 and L3 switches insofar as it can do some routing and other additional advanced traffic management flows. Not necessary for most home users, either.... likely a 'nice to have' that will never actually be used.
You only need a "smart" or "managed" L2 switch. If you see an L2+ switch that's inexepensive, great. Don't waste your money on L3 switches (not that L3 switches are a waste of money... just waste of money when considering they are much more expensive and you almost certainly won't be using the features that cause the cost to increase).