Hello! I wanted to share my home network setup and get some feedback, as well as offer tips for anyone setting up VLANs in their own home network for the first time.
I’ve played around with network design in Packet Tracer before, but doing it for real is a different story especially when you realize how easy it is to lock yourself out if you don’t have a console cable handy. It’s also easy to underestimate how much time this takes. I thought I could finish it in an afternoon, but it ended up taking longer than expected. Still, after spending more time than I planned, I managed to get VLANs running on my network.
If you’re planning to set up VLANs at home, I recommend planning as much as possible before you start. I already had my servers and wireless access points set up, but wanted to improve my network security and maybe get better performance. My setup isn’t perfect—I’m still using an old WAP for my guest network. I could add a guest VLAN to my main WAPs, but I decided to keep the guest Wi-Fi hardware-isolated from my other networks. That way, if I mess something up, I can still reconnect to my router without having to plug in directly.
For now, I don’t plan to add more VLANs or make any big changes. The hardest part was setting up my managed switch with VLANs. I didn’t know the default IP address, so I had to check the manual before I could log in to the web UI. My switch is a cheap 2.5Gbps model the web interface isn’t great and can be confusing. I spent most of my time here, and if I could do it again, I’d get a TP-Link managed switch with a more friendly web UI. Plus I haven’t really used the full bandwidth of the 2.5Gbps switch except for transferring home media files.
On the plus side, I picked up some TP-Link WAPs and was impressed by how easy they were to set up, especially with VLANs. To avoid getting locked out, I recommend keeping your switch handy for a quick factory reset, and always keep a good backup just in case. I also suggest setting up DHCP on each VLAN at first to make sure you can connect to the right VLAN. Then you can disble DHCP on that VLAN and apply static IP address after configuration if needed.
Another tool that helped me was my patch panel. For my servers, I could connect my PC using the patch panel, create a link-local connection, and remote in to change the IP address of those PCs. Make sure to label the patch panel before or this won’t really help.
I haven’t given a ton of tips here, but honestly, setting up VLANs can be pretty straightforward depending on your hardware. I’d love to hear any tips or experiences others have with VLANs or home networking in general!
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