Post by @laird@hachyderm.io

2025-10-20 21:43 UTC

@ewen@social.ewenbell.com @corbet@social.kernel.org setting up an extra SSID is mostly easy for people who know what an SSID is without looking it up. Which is a fairly small slice of humanity. But it's worse than that -- I don't think putting IoT devices on their own SSID *but the same underlying network* makes much sense. You'd probably like IoT networks to look more like guest networks, with strictly controlled access to other devices. Which needs (at a minimum) VLANs and an extra set of firewall policies, all of which depend on so many things that there's no way to produce any sort of useful cookbook for people with moderate amounts of technical skill. And then you'll discover that there's no good way to actually configure new IoT devices without moving a phone onto the IoT network. And some features will just silently fail to work if you don't have direct IP access to the IoT device from a phone. And useful things like mDNS won't work at all unless you go to heroic lengths. I'm perfectly capable of setting up an IoT network at home. I even have most of the config for it rolled out. But I've never moved a single device into the IoT network, because it's just going to make everything extra-painful in practice.

Replies (1)

@ewen@social.ewenbell.com 2025-10-20 23:22

@laird@hachyderm.io @corbet@social.kernel.org Exquisite description of the drama required to isolate IoT from anything important. Right down to the "Oh crap I'm six steps into configuring a device over the Thread network but I forgot to change my phone to the IoT network first. Urgh. Start over." I have actually implemented those firewall rules to restrict what IoT devices can see. And in the back of my mind I'm thinking "What if I missed something?" And then there's the maintenance in case something stops working. The average person will go to Office Depot and buy a box that says "Fast Internet". Even if there was a wifi/router that would setup your separate IoT network by default and manage all those firewall rules, people would still choose a product that is cheaper or has pretty flashing LEDs. And governments let this go on. There is zero effort from my govt to regulate for products that protect consumers. The govt has a website telling us to "be alert for scammers" and other malarkey, with absolutely zero tools that might actually help avoid the average person from having their digital life stolen, let alone just being spied on by corporations.

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