VLAN all the Things

Smart home devices have a reputation – deservedly – as a security and privacy risk. I wanted to mitigate this risk. Some of my smart home devices are cloud-managed and some are locally-managed. The locally-managed devices are connected to a Home Assistant controller that runs on my network. Most of them use an RF network separate from my internal network, running a protocol such as Z-Wave or Matter/Thread. They are isolated from the Internet and that gives me some confidence that they are low risk. The cloud-managed devices, on the other hand, are connected to … well … who the fuck knows. This is common for consumer smart home devices and I try to avoid them. My cloud-connected devices tend to be things for which I couldn’t find a suitable locally-managed alternative. This includes my Dreo fans and my Roborock vacuum cleaner. When I first brought those things into my house I decided that I wanted to isolate them, onto a separate network set up for IoT devices. The Easy Way (that I…