post:2026-02-20-homelab-vlan-notes

Feb 20, 2026

Homelab notes — VLANs and regret

Field notes from splitting IoT off the trusted LAN. Nothing fancy, just the kind of mistakes you make once.

  • #homelab
  • #networking
  • #notes

The short version: I put cheap WiFi bulbs on the same subnet as my NAS for too long. Nothing bad happened, but the guilt was motivational.

I carved out:

  • Trusted: workstations, NAS, wired AP backhaul
  • IoT: cameras, random ESP things, guest gadgets
  • Lab: VMs and experiments that should not touch production DHCP

Big lesson: label switch ports before you move cables. I spent an evening convinced a trunk was broken when I had simply plugged into the wrong patch panel row.

DNS filtering on the IoT VLAN is next. I am trying not to turn this into a second job.

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