I am worried that there is not really a benefit of doing that, just more noise and energy consumption.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    9 months ago

    Why would you want to do this, anyway? Or, as I as a developer regularly have to ask our sales people: what do you actually want to achieve that led you to this question?

    • Ajen@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Here’s my use-case, I’m pretty sure the first 2 are pretty common (common enough to be supported by most OEM firmware):

      • main LAN
      • guest LAN (isolated from “main” but can access internet)
      • IoT LAN (isolated from internet, can be accessed from “main”; prevents devices from phoning home)
      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        9 months ago

        But you don’t need several LANs for this. This can easily done with proper routing. A can access internet and internal network addresses. B can only access internet, and C can only reach internal addresses.

        • mea_rah@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          9 months ago

          I’m curious. How would you identify who’s guest and who’s not in this case?

          With multiple networks it’s pretty easy as they are on a different network.

          • Treczoks@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            10
            ·
            9 months ago

            That’s what MAC whitelists are for. Your DHCP server should be able to handle this.

            Identify your friendly devices and give them one setting with everything (full subnet and correct default GW). Identfy your IoT devices, and give them another (full, or specially limited subnet mask, and fake default GW, maybe a different nameserver, too). Anything else is guest and gets a very limited subnet mask and a working default GW.

            • BritishJ@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              13
              ·
              9 months ago

              This is not the way to do it. The correct way would be multiple SSID’s with each tagged to their own VLAN.

              Each VLAN has its own subnet. You can then use a zone based firewall, to allow the zones(subnets) to access each other.

              You can also then apply QOS, to limit guest network speeds, prioritize LAN traffic etc.

              And zone based firewalls are stateful, you can do rules such as LAN can reach IOT, but not the other way. Or IOT can only reach the IOT server, on specific ports.

              • Treczoks@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                4
                ·
                9 months ago

                I know that this would be the most secure way. But I seriously doubt that this level is necessary in a normal home network.

                • Ajen@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  ·
                  9 months ago

                  “Necessary” is a little ambiguous. You could argue that wifi is unnecessary for a normal home network.

                  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    9 months ago

                    Well, I think it is necessary if you have mobile devices. Anything nailed down should be connected by wire, but if it is mobile, it should get the connection. Especially if the cell phone link is not that good inside the house.

                • BritishJ@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  9 months ago

                  My solution is the correct way and easier way. You don’t need MAC address white-list. You just have a guest SSID with DHCP on, they get the IP from the subnet in that zone. No crazy subnet hacks etc.

                  Can I join your guest network, sure. Let me just grab your mac address, login to the DHCP server, create a reservation with a limited subnet mask that can still see the default gateway.

                  Or can I connect to you guest network, sure here is the code or scan that QR code. That’s it, they’re in the guest VLAN and subnet, zoned off on the firewall and have QOS applied to not saturate the network.

            • Fal@yiffit.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              9
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              9 months ago

              For anyone reading this, please don’t follow this advice. It’s terrible and basically security through obscurity

    • GiveOver@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      9 months ago

      I’m an idiot and I put emojis in my SSID and sometimes devices don’t like that but I don’t want to change everything. So there’s a guest network with no emojis

    • unknowing8343OP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      9 months ago

      It’s more like: I know people do this, but I don’t, so I wanted to see what was the reasoning behind these things.