Wifi Concerns with number of devices?

Hardware
12

Cheap WIFI routers you get from an ISP are all junk with too little resources.

If you buy some “Prosumer” equipment like the fairly priced Ubiquiti stuff you will have no problem having 50-100 low traffic clients like wifi switches without having concern with VLAN etc.

I personally have an Edgerouter 4 and 4 access points from Ubiquiti. And the only reason for 4 is that the house is built in a time where you made walls from a biproduct from coal so there is carbon in the walls that absorb GHz signals. Plan for 2 or 3 access points and you will be good. I have 60 clients on my wifi right now and sometimes reach 70. And I can still run a speedtest from my iPad and get 500 Mbits.

Just avoid cheap wifi router. It will not have enough CPU or memory resources to handle more than a normal family with 10-20 clients

13

If you run 50-100 iot wifi devices I most definitely would be concerned with VLANs. You should at least seperate them from your other devices and limit their ability to talk to other non-iot devices.

14

A good point that i also lately seen missing in people “concerns” in regards to WIFI/Router capabilities ( True, a router specs says maybe up to 128 devices) thou with heavy “talking” devices / High traffic, i doubt one would reach half the amount, before “hitting the roof” at main-router end.
In regards to your old “coal” house, they are about to/will get “modern” again … speaking about crises

15

Why would that make a great difference?

My house is not a business. It is a home. My webserver, my misc server, and my home assistant are wired. My cameras are wired. My TV, my amplifier, all wired.

With the exception of our phones, our iPad, and laptops, all the other things are IOT. Some of these I access directly at times. I could spend a full year of weekends to learn how to setup routing between them so the boxes in the non IOT VLAN can talk to the boxes in the other. And at the end I save a little multicast traffic and increase the load on the router. I cannot see what I get other than trouble.

And do not tell me I have trouble without knowing. My Wifi works 100% reliable. Unlike my Zigbee where I see a light missing a message or a sensor disconnecting daily.

16

Doesn’t matter if you cameras are wired or not, the same principals apply. You should seperate iot-devices (especially cameras!) from you other devices and only let them communicate with your other devices with rules. It doesn’t matter how long you would need to learn the setup. It is best practice. It is common knowledge that iot-devices have more security flaws and gets less patches to address these than for example your ipad. How often do you patch your cameras?
In theory someone could have access to all your cameras, watch your movement and so on because of a exploitable weakness in a device that is connected to the internet.

I haven’t said anything about you having trouble, I only said that you should not run all your iot-devices on a flat LAN. If you have daily issues with your zigbee setup you’re doing something wrong :slight_smile:

Here’s a guide (from 2019) if you want to have a look at separation Guide: Creating Isolated Networks with Ubiquiti UniFi · vNinja.net

17

Is that really? Why does everyone throws this 128 around? Xioami does the same in the marketing for a wifi router but it was no problem to address >200 devices having openwrt on that thing (I think the limit is somewhere around 16k devices for the default openwrt).

Well, I have no Wifi 6 gear (not aware that any “smart” stuff actually utilizes it?) but on the other hand I have over 100 devices (mostly esphome based) on my (very) low-budget grade network which mostly consists of used openwrt capable hardware.

Wasn’t it one of this Z-technology which actually had a hard limit of devices and at some point more coordinator or other hardware is needed? :put_litter_in_its_place:

Beside Wifi devices (the ones you can really own) look like the most hassle and pain-free-:tm: devices for me. Not only the capability to extends it’s functions but also running updates on all nodes with one click beside integrating them in a network which has already perfect coverage (like the one from @intrex by the looks of it).

Only thing I would suggest the author is to don’t buy any random wifi (tuya) hardware but actually only ones that can be owned (hardware & software) completely - so basically being compatible with something like esphome.io :rocket:

One could instead buy wall switches which are based on esp32 and have them working as bluetooth proxies beside them doing there switching stuff :muscle:

18

Doing a quick search first for ZigBee max devices, then conbee 2 max devices seems to suggest there is a big difference what coordinator you choose.
I don’t know if conbee is the best, probably not but the first result seems to suggest 50 isn’t a problem.

https://www.google.com/search?q=conbee+2+max+devices

19

Yes really and I’m not talking about flashed linksys boxes im talking about your garden variety cable modem/ta box. The 128 part comes form the fact that most consumer grade stuff only addresses a /24 or /25 address scheme in thier DHCP server so that’s 254 or 124 usable addresses. So yes 128. OpenWrt and tomato and prosumer gear doesn’t usually suffer the same fate.

Its not just about the end device bandwidth. The WiFi6 standard has improved data handling on the head end so that it handles saturation and a lot of clients better even when there’s A, C or N traffic.

20

Doing a quick search on Z-Wave max devices:

The Z-Wave Network Layer Supports up to 232 domains. Randomly generated in all unincluded nodes

And still the problem to cover larger areas. I didn’t try but I’m sure I would have a hell of time with this (imho) overpriced Z-Stuff on the other hand I had already a quite good wifi setup which covers all areas in need - obvious choice was to stick to wifi. Specially as the Z-Stuff (back in the time) couldn’t be completely owned but mostly limited to own the hardware and have no control over the firm/software :man_shrugging:

21

I bought four ZigBee smart plugs at 50% discount a week ago.
The end price was that they where on par or cheaper than wifi smart plugs (if also bought locally)

22

That’s very nice :+1: still your Z-devices can not profit from the wifi infrastructure you/one have already in place. Beside isn’t it that they also utilize the same 2.4GHz and therefor are counterproductive (interfering to some extend) with the present wifi? :pinching_hand:

Luckily there are a lot’s of viable options for all occasions :raised_hands:

And to getting back to @intrex question: Obviously you not have problems running 100 (or more) wifi devices on your (mainly unifi equipment) network :signal_strength:. Just think about wisely if you really want to invest in hardware you are not allowed to control the firm/software wise :warning: (alternatives like pre-flashed esphome devices are out there!)

23

But it will strengthen the ZigBee network instead giving us better range and making end devices more reliable.
I honestly don’t have anything against wifi smart plugs. I have a few two Tuya :face_vomiting:, and one TP-link that is local only.
They work, but I wouldn’t plan on getting 50 wifi smart plugs whatever manufacturer. I would rather go for ZigBee to make sure I don’t load the network, if that is a real issue or not, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t take the chance purchasing that many in one go.

24

It is not as far I can tell running over 100 esphome nodes with old and cheap consumer grade wifi hardware.

I think you pointed out your affection already couple of times :wink: A big reason I also didn’t opt-in for Z-Stuff back in the day and went all in for (esp based) wifi devices instead was because it is/was a single-point-of-failure construction with this Z-Stuff. Ones the coordinator or how this thing is called is down the whole networks goes down south and renders all devices dumb. :put_litter_in_its_place:

For my setup with esphome based devices I can easily distinguish between different actions (for example on a press of a button) to take when HA is available, HA is not available or even WIFI being unavailable. Due to the nature of being open source it’s even possible to have direct communication between two esp based devices without extra hardware (using esp-now which is available as custom components for esphome) :rocket:

25

Because that can’t happen to a wifi network?
What do you mean will happen when your router goes down? Will your ESP-Home devices still work?
Didn’t think so…
And if a coordinator goes down you can have a backup and get back up in a few minutes.

I understand you are a wifi only person, but you need to understand there are more things in the world.
It’s easy to believe everything is nails if all you have is a hammer.

1 Like
26

Sure it can, just wrote that in my last post as an example what you (your device) can react on if you own it completely (more than just buying hardware) :money_mouth_face:.

My whole “smart” home is build to be resilient. The idea is that it’s not possible for one device (like a coordinator, broker or HA itself) to render all other devices useless. For sure there is a difference between “comfort” features (that are only integrated over HA) and the “basic” ones that always need to work no matter HA, wifi or whatever is not available :brain:

Not only they will work (as long there is energy) but they are also “smart” enough to make the right decisions :bulb:

Not quite. I have other technologies spreaded around like BLE, 433, LORA, Nails, Hammers and more :wink:

27

Just for a little perspective

The original question was, can I have 50 wifi devices on my wifi? Answer is yes. But a generic advice is that the wifi box your ISP gives you is usually a peace of junk. Even for a normal non smart home they are junk that requires resetting all the time. There are many better brands still at reasonable prices. And unless you live in a small 2 roomer, it is a good idea to have a couple of access points.

VLAN is a way to create virtual LANs so the same routers and switches can run networks where a vulnerable device cannot access your sensitive devices. It also means that your Home Assistant and your computers cannot access anything in the other VLAN. So you have to spend a year of network education to learn to define routing tables, enable all sorts of special features to enable multicast features to enable discovery. Just search this forum for VLAN and see all the problems people are having. Many of them without a solution. At the end you have a VLAN setup with so many paths between them that the wall is holed like a swiss cheese and any attacker can easily penetrate via the ports that are part of normal operation.

The real solution to secure IOT is to not invite the crap inside your house.

My cameras are all outside. If someone hacks them they are viewing my garden. The cameras are from Ubiquiti and they are constantly getting firmware updates.

My wifi devices are for the most ESP devices. A few run Tasmota or ESPHome. Many with software I wrote myself. Everything is local. Exceptions are my Amazon Echo devices and a Google Chromecast. But I trust these more than random Chinese crap.

I also have 50+ Zigbee devices. I think Zigbee is the right solution for lightbulbs and for any battery powered sensors. And I have a little Zwave but only 6 devices.

I think each tech has its advantages.

The original question was - is 50 devices on Wifi sensible from a performance. Yes. No worries if you have OK wifi equipment from good brands. And it does not have to be pro Cisco equipment.

VLAN - only for Network experts. It is ill advice to tell beginners to try VLAN unless the VLAN is used for a guest network where total isolation is the goal. It is really hard to get boxes on different VLANS to communicate and discover each other, and unless you know what you do and work with Networks daily, you will end up with a load of problems and so many holes punched that security may be even worse.

On DHCP

To have better recilience, nearly all my IOT devices have hard codes IP addresses. It requires some book keeping. I have a text file with the master list. It is not that hard. Some devices cannot be hardcoded, then I reserve the IP on the router. Amazon Eco boxes as an example. And maybe 10 devices just run DHCP.

It means that if my router goes sour I can still have HA talk to my wifi plugs. If an access point dies, the house runs on the 3 others. If my router dies I can put a new, and most will just work because the IPs are static. Only severe single point of failure is the Conbee Zigbee dongle. If that goes, then I have a spare Sonoff dongle but it would take hours to repair every thing. I cannot change that. Long term Matter should help on that.

28

text file … seriously are you joking ?, i have an .xlsx-file with 5 -flips ( for details informations) … :slight_smile:

29

It’s ok that you don’t have networking knowledge but this is just fundamentally wrong.

To have better recilience, nearly all my IOT devices have hard codes IP addresses. It requires some book keeping. I have a text file with the master list. It is not that hard.

DNS is another network fundamental you should read up on.

VLAN - only for Network experts. It is ill advice to tell beginners to try VLAN unless the VLAN is used for a guest network where total isolation is the goal. It is really hard to get boxes on different VLANS to communicate and discover each other, and unless you know what you do and work with Networks daily, you will end up with a load of problems and so many holes punched that security may be even worse.

VLAN is not hard. I already sent you a link that explains the setup on your system, you could have it up and running quite fast.
Can you explain how “many holes punched” between VLANS would be any worse than having all traffic open on a flat LAN?

1 Like
30

Now remember that we are trying to help the original poster with advice

He is surely not on Ubiquiti Unifi. Your posted link is Ubiquiti Unifi focused.

I have Ubiquiti access points. But not a Unifi router. I have an Edgerouter and I use two WAN ports and one LAN port and cannot split LANs in physical LANs without doing it a switch capable of VLANs. I do not have managed switches capable of VLAN either so I would need to invest 1000s of kroner just to replace equipment. And I would need to learn to setup all this in each box.

Now let us look further at your link. The bloke ends up with two VLANs that cannot see each other. So no IOT device can be seen on the other VLAN. They all meet and kiss in the cloud. Buh! But there is a link to an additional post where where he addresses IOT VLAN

So he starts by enabling mDNS between the two. That will be “fun” to learn with network components from different manufacturers. Most will follow a recipe and not understand what they are doing. Now they can discover each other and talk via the router. But wait… He also makes a firewall rule for his voice assistant devices so established sessions can cross between the VLANs. But how do they establish the session? Cloud? Yahoo, cloud. But wait. Someone has a Sonos setup and that does not work. So the post was ammended and a new firewall rule was added poking a new hole for a port. And UPNP was enabled so the boxes can poke more holes.

What the post does not say is that each time you come home with a new toy and want it to work, it is very likely that nothing will work. My wife buys an Anova sous-vide with wifi and an app to go with it. The Anova goes on the IOT VLAN, her phone on the secure VLAN. Nothing will work. Another weekend to spend to find someone with that problem so we can poke another hole. Problems, problems, problems. I could go on.

Search “VLAN IOT” on this forum. More than 50 hits. Most of them problems. Always problems. You have to be a network expert and willing to invest hundreds of hours to make things work. Surely most cloud based stuff works like they do when you are not home. But the typical HA user will not want to depend on cloud. We want direct access and direct access means that either everything is on same VLAN (pointless) or you have to poke holes in the wall between them.

And the thing with small ESP based IOT boxes is that the only services they run are the ones that do the main function. That is also the entry point of potential vulnerabilities.

Fleskefjes. You are a geek. So am I. It is good to be a geek. But it is also important to have empathy and memory of what it was like to be a newbie and how many years it took us to be where we are now.

I looked at VLAN myself but decided that I would not want to invest the time it takes for very little gain. Instead I have chosen to be extremely picky on what I put in my home of IOT devices. No cheap China cameras. Wifi switches get wiped of any Tuya shit and replaced by my own software or open source software I trust like Tasmota and ESPHome.

That is the kind of advice a newbie can follow. Buy 50 switches, but ensure they are ESP based and can be reflashed. Or buy the stuff that is already programmed with local only software like the Athom Tasmota plugs, or Shelly devices. Stay away from Tuya cloud only stuff.

1 Like
31

VLAN is not a Unifi specific feature. You do not have to be a network expert to set up VLANs, it’s quite easy. I have no issue with you not separating your iot-devices, my issue is with your statements that you need a year of training to understand VLANs and that “unless you know what you do and work with Networks daily, you will end up with a load of problems and so many holes punched that security may be even worse.” - that’s just plain wrong. You cannot have a more unsafe internal network than having it flat with all devices in one subnet. It’s just fine that you don’t want your network as secure as possible, but don’t try to scare away others from hardening theirs.

1 Like