UniFi & VLANs
Splitting IoT, guest and trusted devices, firewall rules that actually hold, and the gotchas nobody mentions.
Notes from a real home setup
Home tech, set up properly — and written up honestly.
I'm John. I run a segmented UniFi network, network-wide DNS filtering, Home Assistant and a handful of self-hosted services. This is where I write down how I built it, what went wrong, and what I'd do differently.
Read the write-ups About this site# ~/home-lab/stack.txt network UniFi, segmented VLANs dns Pi-hole ← every VLAN automate Home Assistant services self-hosted, local-first desktop Fedora Linux # status: works (mostly)
What I write about
Four areas, all running in my own house. No sponsored kit, no theory I haven't tried myself.
Pi-hole everywhere
Pointing every VLAN at one resolver, blocklists that don't break things, and keeping DNS up when a box goes down.
Home Assistant
Automations the household actually tolerates, device choices, and keeping it all working without the cloud.
Local services
What I run at home, how it's reached safely, and how I back it up so a dead disk isn't a disaster.
Write-ups
The first articles are being written now.
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In progress
Why I split my home network into VLANs (and how)
The layout I landed on, the firewall rules between segments, and the mistakes I made first time round.
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In progress
One Pi-hole for every VLAN
Handing out Pi-hole via DHCP on each network, stopping devices that ignore it, and what to do about hard-coded DNS.
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Planned
Putting Home Assistant on the right side of the firewall
Letting Home Assistant reach IoT devices without letting IoT devices reach everything else.
About
I'm John Allan. I'm not a network engineer by trade — I just wanted a home setup that was private, reliable and under my control, and I learned the hard way how to get there.
This site is the notebook I wish I'd had when I started.
How I write
- Tested at home. If it's here, it's running in my house.
- Failures included. What broke is usually the useful bit.
- Specific. Real settings and screenshots, not vague overviews.
- No tracking. No cookies, no analytics, no ads.