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Homelab Rebuild Part 7: One SSID, and the Network Decides

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:45:00 +0200

What this is about Link to heading

Part 1 established that one SSID per VLAN doesn’t work — every SSID costs airtime, and with five or six of them you lose measurable throughput.

The alternative is the one companies use: a single SSID, and the network decides per device. The device authenticates with its own credentials, a RADIUS server checks them and sends the VLAN assignment back with the answer.

Homelab Rebuild Part 5: The First VLAN

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 20:40:00 +0200

Why telephony of all things Link to heading

After part 4 everything is in place: a firewall that can enforce rules, and a host for services. Now comes the first VLAN of my own — and I deliberately started with the case where the least can go wrong.

If the landline dies, it doesn’t matter. I have a Swiss phone and a German phone. A networking experiment whose worst outcome is that one handset doesn’t ring is the ideal first test. That was the selection logic: not the most important service first, the most harmless one.

Homelab Rebuild Part 4: Somewhere for Services to Live

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 20:30:00 +0200

Why at all Link to heading

After part 3 the OPNsense routes and the R4 is a switch and access point. What’s missing is somewhere for services to run. FreeRADIUS, an internal CA, a phone system — all of that needs a home.

The firewall isn’t it. A firewall should forward packets and enforce rules, nothing else. The more that runs alongside, the bigger the attack surface and the more unpleasant every update.

Homelab Rebuild Part 3: Sliding the Firewall In

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 20:00:00 +0200

The awkward part Link to heading

The hardware from part 2 was sitting on the desk. The network kept running. And that’s exactly the uncomfortable spot: the uplink isn’t my hobby project, it’s the way to the internet. If I break it, it’s broken.

So the task wasn’t “set up OPNsense”, it was “set up OPNsense without hours of downtime in between”.

Prepare before it counts Link to heading

The first step had nothing to do with the network: the firewall got assembled in my room, hooked up to the workstation, and fully configured. LAN on 10.0.1.1, DHCP set up, base rules in place, everything clicked through.

Homelab Rebuild Part 1: Where I Started

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:52:30 +0200

What this is about Link to heading

My home network grew the way most of them do: add a device, it works, stop thinking about it. Eventually everything hung off one box and lived in one subnet.

That works fine for a surprisingly long time. But at some point I wanted to do things the setup had no room for — separate devices from each other, push Wi-Fi clients automatically to where they belong, issue my own certificates. That needs a different foundation.