I just read an article that said a vlan is good for many reasons. The one reason that caught my attention is to put smart home devices on a vlan. I have about a dozen smart bulbs and several Google Home Assistant devices. So, I was curious as what I might find if I put them on a vlan.
I tried using an AI to tell me how to set up a vlan on opensuse. Not one word of the answer worked. I have vlan 1.9-144.5 installed. It is labeled 802.1q VLAN implementation for linux. However, when I ran modprobe, as suggested by the AI, I get this.
modprobe 802.1q
modprobe: FATAL: Module 802.1q not found in directory /usr/lib/modules/6.18.5-1-default
First of all, is it worth it to use a vlan? I searched all over yast and saw no references to a vlan. Any advice or tips?
VLANs are mainly useful when you already have a single physical LAN and want to split it into separate logical networks, for example for security isolation or to limit broadcast traffic. They’re most often used on managed switches and routers that understand VLAN tagging.
On a typical home network with a single router and unmanaged switch, setting up VLANs on the PC alone doesn’t usually achieve much by itself.
You’d typically create a separate subnet (unique IP space) for the VLAN and have the gateway router handle routing and masquerading for that isolated subnet, so those devices can still reach the cloud services they depend on.
If you want to restrict direct communication between network participants in your home network, the easiest approach would be to use the possibilities of your router. Most of them have a setting which can deny the direct communication between network participants.
It is not the full approach like a vlan, but at least a start.
I defined 3 vlans on a my system using the same physical interface.
as reference see: vlan systemd-networkd
You can also use network manager but I didn’t test it.
Take in account that you need a IP switch which support vlan tagging.