Devices own router. seperate wifi from personal devices

Hardware
1

Do you have all of your sensors switches and lights on their own Wi-Fi network separate from your familys personal devices. Would this improve your Wi-Fi and general network traffic. Or do you think it’s negligible . I’d like to hear your opinions.

thanks everyone

2

negligible, especially compared to netflix

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3

I found out the other day my router supports a maximum of 32 connected wifi devices. This could be a problem if say every PIR and sensor is a separate ESP device.

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4

Mine was capped at 16, luckily I found a way to change that. (ISP supplied firmware with cap on it, but root made it possible) Increased it to 64 and had no issues…

5

thinking that ill put all my esp8266 and xiaomi sensors on seperate wifi but still use the dhcp from main router. will post my results.

6

Check your router, if you have a fairly recent one most support 2.4GHz and 5Ghz networks.
You could setup the 2.4GHz SSID for your ESP / HA devices and then use the 5GHz SSID for your personal devices (assuming they work with 5GHz)…

7

I started doing this more for security. If one of these devices is hacked or has a backdoor at least it won’t allow access to my main network.

8

Some routers have a “guest network” option. What it does is to create a seperate WiFi network for your guests which can be isolated. That means that the guests wont have access to eachother or to your devices. They will only be able to use the internet. That also means that HA wont be able to track them.

9

How is that useful?

I need my sensors to be able to see HA, and vice versa.

10

You can have your sensors in your private network but your guests in the “guest” one. If you MUST track the guests, then it is not usefull. It is only usefull for the network security. Wifi and network traffic wont improve unless you use a separate router.
To be more specific.

  • If you are worried about traffic, you must first know if there is a problem with it. Your wireless sensors will never use that much bandwidth to slow down your network or even your wifi. Unless you stream cameras over wifi…
  • If your house is big and the router is not powerful enough, you might consider using two routers, splitting the wifi, one for each side of the house.
  • If you are worried about security, use the guest network for the guests, and the private network for your devices and your sensors.

This is actually simple and useful. It just depends on the circumstances.

11

Sorry. I thought you meant to put the sensors in the guest network. My comprehension is bad and I should feel bad.

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12

I have a Orbi Pro mesh. It has three separated networks totally isolated from eachother. An admin a employees and a guest network. Never thought about it like this but of coursse this is a perfect way to have the home automation in one separate network