[GTALUG] OpenWRT Upgrade

[James Knott]

On 2020-07-10 04:04 PM, Val Kulkov wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Jul 2020 at 12:37, James Knott via talk <talk at gtalug.org 
> <mailto:talk at gtalug.org>> wrote:
>
>     On 2020-07-10 12:32 PM, Val Kulkov wrote:
>     > then associate your guest SSID with that VLAN.
>
>     Yes, you associate the SSID with a VLAN.  It's entirely possible
>     to have
>     a Guest SSID without VLANs on a WiFi router, that uses only
>     routing to
>     forward the guest traffic out to the 'net.  VLAN is a LAN function
>     that
>     has nothing to do with WiFi and SSID is a WiFi function that has
>     nothing to do with the LAN.
>
>
> Yes. I agree, you don't really need VLANs if you have only one WiFi 
> access point. But if you have more than one WiFi access point and you 
> want to avoid WDS, which is often not great in congested environments, 
> you'd use Ethernet and VLANs to connect your Wi-Fi access points.
>

Mulitple SSIDs are not the only reason for VLANs.  For example, many 
companies have VoIP phones on the same Ethernet port as the computers.  
The cable connects to the phone and the computer plugs into the phone.  
Here a VLAN is used, without anything to do with WiFi.  Several years 
ago, I set up a network at St. Hilda's Towers, a seniors residence at 
Dufferin & St. Clair.  There were 3 VLANs on the cable.  The native LAN 
was for the office computers, 1 VLAN for office VoIP, 1 VLAN for 
resident's Internet access and 1 VLAN for the management interfaces.  
While there were WiFi access points that carried both the office and 
resident WiFi, the otherwise had nothing to do with VALNs.  I could have 
just as easily set up the network without WiFi.

Again, VLANs and SSIDs are completely independent concepts.  As I 
mentioned, you can have multiple SSIDs without VLANs and multiple VLANs 
without any WiFi.  In some circumstances, as at St. Hilda's you could 
have a WiFi SSID on a VLAN.

Incidentally, VLANs fall under the IEEE 802.3 spec and SSIDs under 
802.11, which are completely separate and unrelated specs.