cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/12664364

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?

  • @[email protected]OP
    2•7 months ago

    Would you recommend a separate POE switch for the cameras?

    Is there anything you would change if you had to start all over again?

    • ilovecheese
      2•7 months ago

      My main need of a separate POE is more logistical than networking, it’s convenient to power a couple of cameras from a distant switch.

      I think if I started over the only things I’d alter would be the number of ports on the main switch. 16 ports at least. I’ve used all 8 and still have things I would use more for.

      Here’s a physical diagram (not all clients are shown) that may help some more: