Dividing your home network with VLANs: the step-by-step plan

A home network with separate networks (VLANs) for your own devices, your smart home, guests and your servers is safer and easier to oversee. But you have to plan it properly first. Below is the order, with the tool that helps you at each step. Background on VLANs themselves is in VLAN for your smart home.

Step 1: Choose an address range per network

Every network gets its own range. Work out how many addresses fit in it with the Subnet Calculator. Don’t remember what a mask or /24 means? Read Subnets and CIDR explained.

Step 2: Divide your network smartly

Do you need networks of different sizes, for example lots of smart-home devices and only a few servers? Enter what you need in the VLSM Planner, with extra room for growth, and you get a layout and an overview of what’s still free. If you just want to divide an existing network into equal pieces, the Subnet Splitter does that.

Step 3: Check that they don’t overlap

Two networks with the same range go wrong as soon as you link them, for example with a VPN, or when Docker picks a range by itself. Check your plan with CIDR overlap.

Step 4: Does it fit on your switch?

Enter your access points and cameras in the PoE and Port Planner and see whether the ports and the power budget of your switch are enough. What to buy is in Choosing network equipment.

Step 5: Choose the wifi channels

Every wifi network (SSID) belongs to a VLAN. Use the Wifi Channel Picker to choose a quiet channel, and take Zigbee into account if you use it. More about that choice: Zigbee or wifi.

Step 6: Put it on paper

A network you can’t find your way around, you don’t maintain. With the Rack and Cable Label Maker make printable labels for your patch panel and cables. Also put the chosen ranges and VLAN numbers in a table, as in the VLAN article.

Afterwards

Set up the firewall rules between the networks following the VLAN article and move devices one by one. See also the other step-by-step plans: setting up a Proxmox server, setting up Docker services and arranging backups.