On 2020-07-10 04:04 PM, Val Kulkov wrote:
On Fri, 10 Jul 2020 at 12:37, James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org <mailto:talk@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.