How do you organize your DHCP clients?
I’m setting up DHCP reservations on my home network and came up with a simple schema to identify devices: .100 is for desktops, .200 for mobiles, .010 for my devices, .020 for my wife’s, and so on. Does anyone else use schemas like this? I’ve also got .local DNS names for each device, but having a consistent schema feels nice to be able to quickly identify devices by their IPs.
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Son, I think it's time you learn about vlans.
I know they exist and vaguely what they do, but I don’t know how to set them up. What’s their advantage over simple DHCP reservations for a small client list?
Based on what you described I really don’t think you need a vlan.
VLANs are a way of separating your network into logical networks without physically separating them. They are useful, but generally require your networking equipment to support them. Most cheap home switches don't really support VLANs, nor do most consumer routers.
I do believe vlans has a place in a home network - to separate guests from home network. Several of the home routers that provide a guest SSID will use vlans. It’s a basic part of openWRT and most home routers. One vlan for upstream and one or two(guest) for inside
The guest wifi may use VLANs on the backend, but it is in no way surfaced to the person managing it. I run Unifi equipment at home, which gives me the power to do all of that however I want, but it doesn't sound like the OP is there yet.
I have a dream machine myself and I’m so sorry I got it. It can do quite a bit, but I can’t have more than one vlan upstream - and it can’t handle igmp forwarding…. It’s shiny though with a nice gui and apps
They certainly have their limitations. I think the same limits are one the gateway I have(I run my own controller, so a dream machine is overkill). Can't say I've encountered a situation where I need WAN VLANs on a home system, though.
The “normal” use-case would be that some IPTV providers will have iptv and “internet” on separate vlans
How small a client list are we talking? If it's that small, then that would beg the question, why would you need dedicated ranges in the first place?
A couple dozen devices maybe. I don’t really need dedicated ranges, but it’s nice to know exactly which device I’m looking at just by the IP when reading logs.
Checking logs is perhaps the only real reason I can see for reserved ip-s. But then again you can do reverse lookups - and like I said in another reply ipv6 is dynamic by nature, so any device will only stay on the same ip for the configured amount of time.
You might not know, but several of your devices might already be communicating using ipv6 on your home network. Both windows and iOS will use link (osi layer 2) local IPv6 and mdns for discovery and communication. This is not true if your switch denies IPv6 but you’d need a level 2 switch or some way to block IPv6 multicast for that.
I'm not saying in anyway that what you're doing is in anyway wrong. It's good that you're thinking the way you are. Just saying, if you're in this frame of mind now, it's a good time to look at vlans. Think dedicated ranges with the benefit of reduced traffic saturation.
I don’t see how VLANs would help OP.
I didn't say they would. I said it's a good time to learn.