… The improvements were immediate and visible across all devices. NAS access was working normally again. Jellyfin was behaving as expected on all the devices, including TVs. Not only this, but the troubleshooting was faster too, and, surprisingly, there were fewer mysterious failures than before. …
… Before creating VLANs, it’s worth sorting out mDNS and multicast so that device discovery just works across VLANs. I realized that smart home integration, casting, device discovery, and printing — all depend on that. …
… But smart devices don’t roam; they drop off. You can set up a dedicated 2.4 GHz SSID for smart devices . mDNS discovery fails without warning When your smart devices keep disappearing from your dashboard, your router might be dropping the multicast packets . …
… After troubleshooting various devices to see if the issue was local, I ended up checking my firewall rules, and that's when it all made sense. I blocked access to a server on the network, but allowed parts of that same device through when testing something. …
… IPv6 uses ICMP packets for core network functions, such as neighbor discovery bye-bye ARP and router advertisements. The right fix was to allow ICMP, but block incoming ping echo requests ICMPv6 type 128 on the router, so that random WAN devices can't ping the machines on my local network. …
… Once Home Assistant was up, the device discovery was impressive. My smart TV, Apple TV, HomePod, router, and other smart devices popped up in minutes, and each took a couple of seconds to configure. …
… Related 6 tips to securely share guest Wi-Fi with friends Make guest access easy backed by robust security A guest network fixes the chatter issue, too Cheap IoT devices create a ton of "noise" When devices are connected to a network, they'll commonly send discovery traffic to scan for other device… …
… The discovery you need to make here is that when you dig past the stylized, modern Windows 11 settings app and punch straight into the raw, un-redesigned depths of the legacy device manager, you can flip one hidden power optimization property on your network card. …
… Troubleshooting a box with one role is much simpler than untangling a board that has become your DNS server, media helper, metrics collector, and test bench all at once. When the device has a narrow purpose, failures are easier to isolate, and fixes are easier to trust. …