Do I have to give up on separate VLANS?

[davidrapan (David Rapaň)]

@wmaker

I hope you don’t mind if I ask, as I have been trying to understand the settings under “Network adapter”, but if one were to untick the box say for Adapter: enp0s1.70, and reboot HA (core), does enp0s1.70 still work? The reason I ask is that the description says “Currently this setting only affects multicast traffic” but I’m wondering if the ticked/unticked boxes are what actually enable/disable the adapter for any kind of traffic flowing through that adapter.

Yes, it will still work. That setting does exactly what it says. It does not affect the connection itself.

[wmaker (Tommy Long)]

That’s good to know.
This then leaves me wondering how the ticked boxes affect Matter Server’s multicast, any ideas? AFAIK, Matter will listen on any adapter for receiving mDNS, but in the case where Matter Server sources mDNS, I don’t know if it uses all the adapters that are ticked, or if it uses only the default adapter (or something else)?

[stevegroom]

Install method - Homeassistant Yellow.

I see what you are saying about a guest network - my guest network is internet access only. Home assistant manages the automations, but physical switches are there for guests.

mdns reflector in Unifi responds to the test commands I send from both networks.

[stevegroom]

Can’t find what you refer to as /config/network

[stevegroom]

I used to use a R Pi4 home assistant with a SONOFF Zigbee dongle. The dongles network ID was copied to the HA Yellow as part of the upgrade.

Can I use a SONOFF dongle as a thread router on an HA Yellow? Do I need to reset it somehow?

[francisp (Francis)]

@stevegroom

Can I use a SONOFF dongle as a thread router on an HA Yellow? Do I need to reset it somehow?

Yes, just flash the Thread firmware, and install the OTBR add-on.

[davidrapan (David Rapaň)]

It should be at the bottom of that page.

[davidrapan (David Rapaň)]

It should use all selected.

[stevegroom]

Thank you - found the section.

Currently the HA Yellow single physical port only registers one adapter - I’ve not tried to get two vlans assigned to one port - here I have Tagged VLAN Allow All, but not sure what else is needed to activate this (Reboot HA did not help).

[davidrapan (David Rapaň)]

You mean like configure it to use multiple vlans?

If so, you have to setup the adapters manually throught the shell using nmcli (I don’t know about any other way currently)

[stevegroom]

I’ve not heard of nicki - I’ll have to start digging. Tnx for the heads up.

[tmjpugh]

@stevegroom

Currently the HA Yellow single physical port only registers one adapter - I’ve not tried to get two vlans assigned to one port - here I have Tagged VLAN Allow All, but not sure what else is needed to activate this (Reboot HA did not help).

If you create a untagged lan it will be on all vlans and untafgged lans by default under unifi unless you create firewall rule that blocks it. This is what i meant with below

@tmjpugh

MAIN - servers and network devices. Full access to other vlans

[stevegroom]

I’m too nervous at this point in time to try to add a vlan to the only physical connection to my HA instance.

nmcli does not exist on HA yellow. The command I need is part of ha network - something like this:

ha network vlan end0 20 --ipv4-method static --ipv4-nameserver 192.168.2.6 --ipv4-address 192.168.3.14/28 --ipv4-gateway 192.168.3.1

I prefer to use DHCP to assign everything and it has to have IPv6 for Thread.

If HA Yellow is not able to connect to any network, is there a way to connect locally in order to recover?

I think I should practice on an old RPi3.

[tmjpugh]

@stevegroom

If HA Yellow is not able to connect to any network, is there a way to connect locally in order to recover?

HDMI cable, TV and direct connection

[francisp (Francis)]

Won’t work, the yellow does not have a HDMI port.

[stevegroom]

Making progress here.

So I built a test HA using an old RPi3 B+
Once it was minimally set up, I tried various ha network and ip commands and was able to make these changes without losing connectivity.

1. ensure the HA hardware is using DHCP with a dynamically assigned address - so if you confuse the config, it should always have a usable IP address that you can connect to.
2. Confirm the regular network config - on my Unifi switch, the HA instance was on the IoT vlan 20.
3. Configure the Unifi switch to support multiple VLANS

Port                    active
Native VLAN / Network   IoT (20)
Tagged VLAN Management  Custom
Tagged VLANS            Main (50)

Advanced                Auto

4. Install the SSH add on to HA.
5. Add vlan 50 to the HA ethernet port

ha network vlan enu1u1u1 50 --ipv4-method auto --ipv6-method auto

The following commands might be useful

ha network info | more
ip link
ip addr show
ip link delete dev enu1u1u1.50

I restarted the RPi and was able to reconnect to HA on 8123 and over ssh

The settings > system > network now shows the second network interface as a vlan

I’m now setting up Open Thread Border Router using a Sonoff Dongle Plus E, and once I confirm that works, I’ll repeat these steps on the HA Yellow.

[davidrapan (David Rapaň)]

Oh yeah I totally forgot about multiple ways of HA installation cause I’m always using HAOS through qemu. But I’m glad you found a way how to set it up! Taking notes.

[brendan]

What a lot forget to take into account is that Matter relies on ipv6 and mDNS, which i tricky across VLANS because mostly (for matter) it is using the link local address, which not routable, which means link local can’t route acrosss VLANs. Not to say it is impossible to get Matter to work across VLANs, but it it wasn;t designed to work across VLANs.
Multi homing your HA instance is likely the best work around, but there is not going to be a 100% guarantee Matter devices will work across different VLANs without consdierable faffing around.

I am no expert in Matter of course, but this thread has some good information Home Assistant can’t add Matter devices that are in a different VLAN - Configuration / Matter/Thread - Home Assistant Community (home-assistant.io)

[agners]

@brendan

What a lot forget to take into account is that Matter relies on ipv6 and mDNS, which i tricky across VLANS because mostly (for matter) it is using the link local address, which not routable, which means link local can’t route acrosss VLANs. Not to say it is impossible to get Matter to work across VLANs, but it it wasn;t designed to work across VLANs.
Multi homing your HA instance is likely the best work around, but there is not going to be a 100% guarantee Matter devices will work across different VLANs without consdierable faffing around.

This sums it up quite nicely. I’d only want to mention that the resolver integrated in Matter SDK should be able to handle multi homing. But the Home Assistant Matter Server currently scopes link-local addresses which are sent from the Home Assistant companion app. I’ve added a comment to the linked thread.

[davidrapan (David Rapaň)]

Yeah about that…

I’m running HA connected to 3 VLANS w/ enabled mDNS on all 3 of them… This was let’s say relatively easy to do (even w/ that manual configuration of SLAAC, ehm). BUT! At the same time there is mDNS repeater (avahi) running on my OpenWRT router and thaaaat was something else! It went nuts. Collision detection was updating HA’s hostname w/ every packet (incrementing that suffix counter). So I had to build my own version of avahi repeater w/ hardcoded macs of all 3 HA’s interfaces as repeater’s “blacklist”.