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Forum Discussion
VLAN Tagging for Guest Network
I've seen a couple of posts about this in the past on this forum, but all of them appear to be kinda old, and before you could uncheck the "Allow Guests to see each other and access my local network"...
peteytesting, thanks for the reply!
I get what you're saying about routing functions belonging to the router, but only the wireless AP knows which network/SSID the traffic came from. So it would be the only one that could augment the traffic in any way to let the router know that this traffic came from this SSID and that traffic came from that SSID. This is typically done in the form of VLAN tagging.
The way that I figured it would work, is that the AP would tag the VLAN that the traffic came from before it passes it off to the router. Forcing the VLAN tags at the AP level also has the added benefit that the client, assuming it's capable of tagging, can't just make up it's own and decide which network it wants to be a part of. It's with these VLAN tags that I can have my router do more advanced routing such as allowing certain requests through the firewall, assigning different dhcp realms, etc.
If you can suggest a different way other than VLAN tags though from my upstream router to understand which SSID a set of traffic came in on though, I could probably also work with that as well!
There's roughly zero chance the Orbi will ever support tagging - it's just not that sophisticated (by design), intended as a "fire and forget" consumer device only.
Rodney
That's a bummer, I had assumed because of posts like this: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Support-for-vLAN-tagging/td-p/1266588 that it was something that they were open to, but they just hadn't gotten to at the point that post was made. I was actually hoping that it was already implemented somewhere in the interface that I hadn't found yet.
Netgear still hasn't been convinced to provide basic fundamentals, like:
- Restoring the capability to see which node and band devices are connected to
- Providing a firmware changelog
- Allowing Ethernet backhaul
- Preventing guest networks from breaching the network perimeter over IPv6
GIven the UI complexities of implementing a proper tagging interface, and what's more, _handling_ those tags (i.e. firewalling, etc.), I'd imagine this feature would fall into the "pie in the sky" category more than anything else. Netgear will promise the world, but delivery is another matter entirely.
Naturally, I quite hope to be proved wrong on this one, but an outcome even worse than them not delivering is delivering it half-baked, which if anything might well be the most likely ending to the story. Time will tell, I suppose.
Personally, I share the gripe of many on this and other (Linksys comes to mind) forums that this "me too!" business of "mesh networking" by players with no business in the game is disenchanting to an extreme. eero, as much difficulty as I had with their (ultimately returned) product, appear to be the market leaders for good reason...they actually had a plan and are executing against it with very clear technical knowledge of the needs (if not desires) of the market they virtually single-handedly created. Now if only they could stop being so dependent on the cloud...
Rodney
FYI: The Orbi (consumer) does actually support VLAN tagging -- in Singapore. The lack of (at least guest) VLAN tagging in the Orbi broadly is a poor decision by Netgear.
I believe (personal opinion) that this is a case where Netgear feels they can justify the decision by saying consumers don't want or can't be bothered with such complexity but, in truth, they probably don't want to erode from their other product lines or burden their consumer support teams. For instance, if the Orbi Pro adds VLAN tagging and full 802.1q support, then why would Netgear want a small office to "get by" with a consumer Orbi? The second point I mention is a valid concern of course but could be mitigated by a simple checkbox "Enabling any of the advanced or beta features of the Orbi and Orbi Pro will limit your product's support as none of the those features are supported by Netgear."
In this case, I think Netgear needs to hear the demand directly or via loss of sales on the affected products. With that said, I'm sure most consumers are happy without anything discussed in this thread... as are most without having a password, leaving their screens unlocked at home, having password postied and spreadsheets, etc. At some point, the industry needs to push consumers to better setups with or without their knowledge (for the benefit of all).
Cheers
- Matthew Kurowski