Are VLANs Worth It for a Home Network?

as your home network becomes larger with the right equipment you can set up what's known as vlans these do come with a host of benefits but are they really worth setting up in the first place in today's video we'll discuss some of these benefits to help you decide whether it's worth it for you if you're new to the channel my name is chris and i run homenetworkgeek.com where we talk about everything home networking if you enjoy the video be sure to drop it a like and subscribe if you haven't already now let's jump straight in and find out what a vlan even is the idea is that the devices that frequently communicate with each other are grouped together in their own vlan now in a corporate environment where vlans are much more commonly used compared with the basic home network the i2 departments could organize their vlans based on their users the departments they belong to the security policies that applied and even the type of network traffic one of the biggest advantages of having a vlan in place is that it allows you to partition a single switch-based network without requiring any changes to the equipment or the infrastructure without knowing about vlans you could assume that these groups of devices would need to be connected to their own individual switches so you could end up having multiple switches with just a few devices connected to each now thanks to vlans that's certainly not the case with the right equipment in place you could have all of your devices connected to a single switch but still isolated in their own vlans now there are three different types of vlans all of which work slightly differently the first is protocol vlans and they handle the network traffic based on the communication protocol that's used between devices secondly you have static vlans which require a network admin to assign each individual port on a switch to a particular vlan and finally you have dynamic vlans which allow you to organize devices into separate vlans based on the characteristics of that device setting up vlans for your devices does come with benefits including improved network management for particularly busy networks and improved security they would only allow certain devices to communicate with each other but some people argue that setting up vlans really isn't worth it in my opinion setting up a vlan on your home network can be worth it but it does depend on the type of network setup you currently have or are planning on implementing in the future now if you only have a few devices that you're just interested in getting to talking to each other and being able to access the internet setting up a vlan for yourself probably isn't worth it but if you're more of an enthusiast and take a genuine interest into how all this works want to maximize your home network performance you value your home network security or just want to experiment for learning purposes and see how you get on setting up a vlan can definitely be worth it they can also help to reduce broadcast traffic and improve the overall performance of your network so that's something that a lot of people would value if you're anything like me and like everything to be neat and organized even when it comes to your digital devices set up a vlan makes managing all of your devices that much easier as an example you can have separate vlans for all of your wireless devices perhaps your servers all those devices that you only want to be able to access the internet and not communicate with your other devices now vlans are a fantastic way of being able to scratch your own itch without potentially irritating the rest of your family as well now if your family or anything like mine you'll appreciate how frustrating it can be for them when you're testing something or in the middle of making a change and then you just hear that voice from another room complaining where they've lost their access to the internet having all of your test devices in their own separate vlan means you can do all of your testing to your heart's content whilst still keeping all of the other families devices online and keeping them happy so to wrap up on whether setup vlans are worth it for you if you like the idea of isolated network traffic for better overall performance security and overall management of your devices it can definitely be worth it but if you aren't too worried about this and just want your devices to be able to access the internet with still an adequate level of security in place you probably don't need to worry about setting them up you'll be pleased to hear that the requirements in terms of gear to set up vlans is relatively low when shopping for a network switch if it's described as being a managed or a smart switch chances are it does support vlans but make sure to check the product description before purchasing it just to make sure now if you aren't familiar with managed or smart switches the managed switches come with all the bells and whistles but with a higher price tag now smart switches sit somewhere between fully managed switches and your basic unmanaged switch that comes with a fixed configuration they offer the features that you're actually more likely to make use of in a home network setup but without the higher price tag of the fully managed switch something else to keep in mind is that if you want the ability to root network traffic between your different vlans you'll need something else for this your typical home router won't be capable of this nor will a layer 2 switch so this means you end up needing a layer 3 switch for us in our home networks it's unlikely that you'll want to route traffic between your vlans so you can probably just get away with a switch that does support vlan tagging we've already covered some of the benefits that come with setting up vlans so let's take a look at some of the practical ways you could use them in your own home network if you have children vlans can be used to isolate the devices that your kids are using in their own vlan and keep them separate from your main network as i mentioned earlier you can apply certain security policies to vlans so the devices that your kids are using will have stricter measures in place than your devices now not only will this offer them more protection when they're browsing online but it also keeps you safe in the sense they can't mess something up by mistake now many people that use iot devices ip cameras or smart speakers like google home or amazon alexa will favor placing these devices in their own vlan to keep them separate from everything else as an example you may have an ip camera the only you want to be able to communicate on certain ports with certain devices within a vlan this is possible so you know exactly what's talking to each other and gives you that bit of peace of mind when it comes to data security if you have visitors you are likely going to want to isolate their network traffic and keep them separate from your main network having a dedicated guest network in place thanks to vlan will still provide you guests with access to the internet but remove the risk that they could potentially access your network now your friends and family that come to visit are unlikely to want to perform any malicious activities but still reassuring to know that the protection is there this is especially true if they do something in error which unintentionally has an impact on your network so that's a quick overview on vlans and how you may benefit from setting them up on your own home network so i really hope you enjoyed the video and you found it helpful if you did i'd really appreciate it if you could drop it a like and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already also don't forget to pay a visit on over to homenetworkgeek.com where i have a ton of articles that cover everything home networking thank you so much for watching and i'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Home Network Geek

Views: 13,012

Keywords: home network geek, homenetworkgeek.com, home networking, IT, networking, technology, home network, vlan, vlans, virtual local area network, benefits of vlan, vlan setup, what is a vlan, home network vlans, home network vlan, vlan on home network, advantages of vlan, vlan uses, how to use vlan, uses of vlans, are vlans worth it, home network vlan uses, are vlans worth it on a home network, vlan benefits, vlan tagging, vlan switches, network switches, vlan network

Id: QFMy-LTPyq0

Length: 6min 45sec (405 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 25 2021