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    Mac Address Based VLAN Project -- Success!

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved L2/Switching/VLANs
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    • N
      n70
      last edited by

      J24 thank you for the layout. I am attempting to replicate with an orbi (RBR50) in access point mode and by happenstance the same network switch. Trying to keep it basic, I took an old wired windows laptop and put it on the vlan segment 10 via mac binding as you suggested.

      Router -> Switch -> Laptop

      When I take the same laptop but hard wire it through the orbi, I lose the ip address.
      Orbi is on vlan1. When I put Orbi via the lan port on the vlan 10, orbi will not pick up an ip address either.

      At this time none of the ports have a pvid turned on.

      Do you know why this isn't working? I seems like it should.
      Thank you

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • JKnottJ
        JKnott @J24
        last edited by

        @j24

        It sounds like you might be talking about Shortest Path Bridging, which uses MAC in MAC to provide a better switching fabric than with Spanning Tree Protocol.

        PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
        i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
        UniFi AC-Lite access point

        I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • N
          n70
          last edited by

          Ok thank you. I read about the protocols

          Still struggling however. My ultimate goal is isolating IOT via MAC and the consumer grade mesh systems do not support vlan over ssid as you point out.

          My problem is replicating your setup as the packets don't seem to get to the IOT device through the access point. I think it is my switch setup for the access point and If you could further explain your setup for the access point that would help me.

          In your project above you state

          "VLAN 10 -- is trusted devices... wifi devices have their mac address associated with the VLAN tag. It is a mix of wired and wifi devices.

          VLAN 30 -- is IoT and those I have to enter the Mac addresses for. All wifi devices."

          So my question is how did you configure the switch to allow the vlan traffic to get through the access point?

          1- did you set up orbi as an approved mac address to for vlan 10 and 30. This doesn't seem to work for me?
          2- did you use pvid for vlan 10 and 30 and plug orbi into that port? I was going to try this next.

          Appreciate your thoughts.

          S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • S
            SpiderJerusalem @n70
            last edited by

            @n70 Did you get this worked out? I think I'm having the same issue. When I connect a machine directly to the switch I have success passing the tag, however, when I run through the access point the switch registers the device in the address table, assigns the tag, but the machine can't get on the network.

            JKnottJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • JKnottJ
              JKnott @SpiderJerusalem
              last edited by JKnott

              @spiderjerusalem

              APs use the VLAN tag to select the SSID to be used. I don't know that they'll pass a VLAN tag, at least not without QinQ.

              PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
              i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
              UniFi AC-Lite access point

              I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • N
                n70
                last edited by

                Hello.. My issue was the PVID setup was incorrect. Don't focus on MAC address assigning a VLAN until the PVID is configured correctly. Lets say the router to the switch plugs into port 1 and the switch to the AP leaves from port 8 (on the switch).

                lets use Vlan 1 and 10 from the images above where 1 is default and 10 is trusted; lets put the AP on Vlan 10

                Vlan 1 for the router and switch needs to be untagged on the switch side (port 1). Configure the PVID for port 8 to be vlan 10. Finally on Vlan 10 set port 1 tagged and port 8 untagged.

                After you can get the PVID setup you can then move onto assign MAC addresses in the switch to assign a different downstream Vlan.

                Hope this helps.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • GPz1100G
                  GPz1100
                  last edited by

                  Does that gs308T support mac wildcards?

                  GPz1100G 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • GPz1100G
                    GPz1100 @GPz1100
                    last edited by

                    Replying to myself.

                    I got the switch and finished setting up. It does not appear to support mac wildcards for mac based vlan. I tried 00, and FF as the wild card characters. Rejects * as well. So each unique mac must be manually entered.

                    I suppose if there's a long list, one could make a backup which is text based, then following the existing format, paste additional macs in there, restore.

                    Functionality; My set up at this time is using sophos utm. Each vlan has its own dhcp server assigned along with various firewall and masq rules. The setup does appear to work.

                    I'll need to use a linux client to do some probing to see if I can see what leaks over on the wifi side from clients on different vlans.

                    What is missing from the initial steps is the pvid screen, which proved quite important. It is important to assign all pertinent vlans as UNTAGGED in the configuration. In the example below, physical port 8 is the one feeding the orbi device.

                    For now it's configured with 2 vlans, 4 and 5. Proper connectivity would not happen until vlan 4 and 5 were configured as untagged. PVID of 4 means any undefined (no mac vbased vlan entry exists) mac will be defaulted to vlan4.
                    0187b852-a37d-4e88-b966-140ef2128862-image.png

                    The rest of the lan operates on vlan1, which is not assigned to that port at all. I may make special routing rules later for a few things (like WOL using app on phone). For the most part, I don't want anything wifi having access to the main network.

                    The switch cost me about $50, the orbi's cost nothing. I am hopeful sometime in the near future someone figures out how to gain console access so the whole vlan mess can be untangled and defined properly. It's a bit odd having the same ssid/wifi password for the guest network as other networks.

                    N 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • N
                      n70 @GPz1100
                      last edited by

                      @gpz1100

                      Yeah it works and hopefully your clarification will help others. Agree its a bit odd that the main and guest networks have the same VLAN,

                      You can have both the guest and main networks with different passwords in the AP settings for Orbi but it all defaults to the one vlan.

                      I debated trying to separate the main and guest networks by assign Vlans by the various Mac addresses for the orbi radio frequencies.

                      you can log into the Orbi router and satellites- at http://192.168.1.1/hidden_info.htm

                      you will see the there are 2g and 5g mac addresses which i think (unverified) map to
                      2g main
                      5g main
                      2g guest
                      5g guest

                      Ultimately I didn't want to spend the energy, since i figured i would need to do it for the main AP as well as the satellites. I thought it was good enough. If you decide to try this approach and can make it work please report back.

                      Thanks

                      GPz1100G 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • GPz1100G
                        GPz1100 @n70
                        last edited by

                        @n70

                        The problem is this POS is blocked/locked from shell/console access. Both 2.4 and 5ghz bands share the same ssid and can't be divorced. Otherwise I'm sure it'd be simple enough to create several ssid's, each bound to a vlan.

                        Netgear charges an arm and a leg for this (rbk763s), around $500USD but the functionality is about as dumbed down as wrt54g from 2001.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • N
                          n70
                          last edited by n70

                          Hi.. do you mean you want to do this?

                          https://www.tech21century.com/separate-ssid-for-2-4-and-5-ghz-on-orbi/

                          of course I haven't tried it and didn't want to risk bricking the AP
                          thanks

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • P
                            Platypus123 @J24
                            last edited by

                            @j24 A bit late to this party, can are you able to share a screenshot of the Switching > VLAN > Advanced > VLAN Membership, for one of your static VLAN groups? I'm trying to see where I'm going wrong with the tagged/untagged options.

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