Newb/Config Help
Ive been googling and searching and the guides seem somewhat confusing for someone like me. I have no IT experience I can follow video tutorials and well explained guides with minimal questions. But I have been hacked before and this is why I bought a firewalla purple. My concern is if I just plug it in and play right out of the box how powerful is it? I feel like I should be doing more. I am having trouble with network segmentation. I don't need my IoT devices communicating with eachother but I set up a VLAN and I can't get anything to connect to it its all connected to LAN 1. Im using a TPLink router in AP mode. Is there a better router for this? I just don't know any rules I can select that aren't preconfigured to help secure my network even more and that kinda worries me. Any help would be appreciated because I can't seem to figure it out and its beyond frustrating.
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Firewalla is powerful but designed to be easy to use. Out of the box it does a good job of protecting you from a lot of outside stuff, but to really make it fly, you need to customize it to your network. There are articles about every feature. Some are easier to pickup than others when you are starting out.
There are lots of people who can help, here or Reddit, or a facebook group, but your best bet is to pose focused questions after doing a little reading and ask what you need...is this the right way? is there a better way? etc.
If you don't feel like you have the time to learn or you need a little help getting started there are also people who can set things up for you or consult on things like what APs to choose.
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Ok thats good to know but I definitely fall into the category of wanting to make this thing really fly :)
I think where I should start is probably network segmentation. I have a Nvidia shield which always shows 8 ports but I don't have port forwarding on and nothing shows up with external scan in the firewalla app. I have a phone and 2 smart tv's and I want those devices on a different network and i dont want them communicating with eachother but i want them to access the internet that is really all I think I need.
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https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408644783123-Building-Network-Segments is a good place to start. You will likely need a new AP that supports SSID/VLAN tagging, and maybe a managed switch that supports VLANs, depending on how many devices you have.
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So I need both or would one work? Could I buy something that is a router but also like a switch? Or would I be better off with just a managed switch? I followed a guide on reddit with the firewalla community and did some best practice blocking with the preinstalled target lists which I really like a lot. My main question is when im adding the rule do I want to apply most of these rules to all devices or do I want to apply it to the network?
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The FWP only has two ports. One will connect to your WAN, the other is for your LANs. If you only have wireless devices, you could get by with only an AP that supports SSID/VLAN tagging connected to the LAN port of your FWP. But, if you have any other wired devices, you'll need to get a managed switch and plug that into your FWP's LAN port, then the AP into the switch.
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@christopher M you can ping me at cikeped987@kaimdr.com or @mbierm (twitter)
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