Just wanted to share this Youtube video (Invidious link here) that explains how to configure Openwrt VLANs for your Wifi network! I was struggling for hours today trying to configure VLANs on my Openwrt AP when I found an old Reddit thread linking to this guy’s channel!
He seems to have a whole series on Openwrt, so if you need a complete beginner guide he sounds great!
What hardware do you recommend?
Are there any that are smart enough for a SMB setting where the APs all scan other networks and then talk to each other and set their own channels and power levels to optimize WiFi traffic with minimal channel or power overlap?
I use a Flint 2, I think I have something like 5 AP’s On it and it covers my whole home. I have a bunch of vLANs as well for the APs and VPN’s. It came with some custom OpenWRT install but I flashed it with a vanilla version instead. I was using an Apple Airport Extreme prior to getting the Flint 2, but my place flooded and I got board so I took up the hobby of home labbing while I wait on insurance to get things rolling (after a few months the flooring is finally going in tomorrow) my original plan was going to be use the Airport as an extender but I did not need that, but yes APs with the same SSID will work together. My Flint 2 has SMB setup to back up its settings to a pi I have on my LAN.
Tbh I just picked something that was in their list of supported hardware that also operated with the Wifi bands I needed and had a good amount of Flash and RAM. Try to take the time to research what wifi drivers suck, such as Broadcomm. Mine is a Qualcomm, I got the Linksys MX5300 Velop Mesh, and now that I got my 3 wifi VLANs set it seems pretty nice. Haven’t gotten to use it much though so we’ll see, but I’m excited.
I do recommend checking how many radios it has because I was maybe considering having my Smart TV on it’s own VLAN but I don’t have enough radios for that. Maybe I’ll put it on the IoT VLAN.
Sorry, I don’t know anything about this 😅 You’d have to research this.
Many routers support more than one SSID per radio.
Huh, just checked settings and I see that you can add SSIDs to a radio. Awesome, thanks!