I’ve recently installed home assistant and gotten a few smart devices, and I think it is about time to separate the home network up into different VLANs before it grows too unmanageable.
Goals:
- Separate smart home crap from the rest of my home network
- Maybe setup a guest network
- Finally switch home network to use a password that isn’t our landline number
Networking Equipment I have:
Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra (Acting as router + unifi controller)
2x Unifi APs (1x AC Lite and 1x AC Pro)
3 Unmanaged switches scattered around the place
Smart home related stuff I have that connect via the network:
A few TPLink tapo smart plugs
A switchbot smart plug
A few broadlink smart IR remotes
A Tuya smart plug (I’m throwing it out so it can be ignored)
A home assistant install running in a VM on my NAS
Other networked devices:
A 3d Printer (Ender 3 V3 KE, using Wifi)
A Printer (Brother MFC-T920DW, using Ethernet)
I have completely no experience with VLANs but here’s what I would like to do in terms of VLANs, open to feedback:
- VLAN for home network (Servers, Devices owned by family members)
- VLAN for smart home things
- VLAN for a guest network
Questions:
- How do I handle home assistant? I would like it to be able to discover smart devices in the network instead of having to manually find the IP addresses of new smart devices each time I add one.
- Would the servers fit better in their own VLAN or within the same home network VLAN?
- Where would the printers fit in terms of VLANs? Airprint will be required to function as all but one device in my family relies on Airprint to print.
