Time to rethink my home network

I have not done much with my home network and it is starting to flake out, so I’m going to use that as an excuse to rethink (read: overcomplicate) it.

BACKGROUND

I am currently just using the hardware that I got when I signed up for internet through my cable provider. I’ve been skeptical of this for a while now, but as of late, my wifi keeps “dropping out.” By “dropping out,” I mean, all of a sudden all my wireless devices report that they’ve lost connectivity to the internet. However, my devices that are hardwired still have access…

This behavior is puzzling and I have done very little to troubleshoot, other than unplug and replug the provided wifi router. I also called the cable company and they suggested doing a factory reset on the router. I’m not going to do that.

So I’ve purchased a (very humbly named) Ubiquiti UniFi Dream Machine because, well, because I don’t have a good reason here. But it will allow for me to do some items that I’ve been meaning to which will, undoubtedly, make things harder for myself.

CHALLENGE

Here’s a high level overview of my current network environment:

• cable modem (ISP provided)
• wifi router (ISP provided) [downstairs den]
• UniFi Switch 8 POE-60W [downstairs den]
• UniFi AP-AC In Wall [downstairs office]
• Raspberry Pi Model B Rev 1: serving DHCP and DNS…

SOLUTION

Having a more powerful wifi router will allow me to make some updates. Some things I’d like to accomplish (hopefully in upcoming posts):

• re-ip the entire network (10.8.26.0/24 is based on my address and cute, but to avoid work IPs I will use 172.31.0.0/16)
• create different VLANs for infrastructure vs. IoT devices
• separate my DHCP and DNS services
• make it so that if my pi-hole goes down, it doesn’t take everything down
• reduce reliance on my old ass raspberry pi
• incorporate some sort of secure DNS (be that DOH or DOT)