On my network, I have quite a few VLANS.

One for work, one for IoT devices, one for security cameras and home automation, one for Guests, etc.

I typically keep everything inward facing, with the only way to access them via my OpenVPN connection (which only can see specific services on specific VLANs).

Recently, I thought of hosting a little Lemmy instance, since I have a couple domains I’m not doing much with.

I know I can just expose that one system/NGINX proxy and the necessary ports via WAN, but is it best practice to put external facing things on their own VLANs?

I was thinking of just throwing it on my IoT VLAN, but if it were to be compromised, it would have access to other devices on that VLAN because (to my knowledge) you cannot prevent communication between clients within the same VLAN.

  • ShouldIHaveFun@lemmy.pec0ra.ch
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    2 years ago

    you cannot prevent communication between clients within the same VLAN.

    Can’t you use a firewall for this?

    Anyway, my guess is it’s probably better to use a separate vlan or a DMZ for that. But given my poor security experience, others can probably better help you on this one

    • root@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 years ago

      To my knowledge, devices within a VLAN can see eachother, because they do not cross the firewall (since they are layer 2). I may be wrong, but that’s my experience and what I’ve read.

      • damium@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        You can use host firewalls or l2 firewalls (sometimes called transparent mode). Many hypervisors offer l2 firewall features. You can also enable l2 isolation on some network devices.