u/Amen_Ra_61622

My home network is pretty typical and I imagine is the same as a lot people's.

Wifi IOT

1 Smart Switch

1 Smart Bulb

1 Google Home Speaker

1 Amazon Echo

Wifi devices

Multiple personal laptops; at the most two might be online at the same time.

1 Smartphone

Wired devices

4 PCs

1 Raspberry Pi

1 TV

1 A/V Receiver

1 Roku

1 Printer

Most hardliners would say separate things into different VLANS. But that can get costly depending on the hardware. I'm wondering if it would be worth the expense? I have an old Netgear R6700v2 using OpenWRT that supports 1gig LAN and a 16 port unmanaged 1gig switch.

Upgrading to a managed switch, a router that supports VLANS, and an access point that can support multiple SSIDs could get expensive. As you can see there are only 4 IOT devices, 2 wifi devices that are not IOT, and 9 wired devices. Not all are online at the same time. So I get the sense that I would have a VLAN for the IOT devices and another for my trusted personal wifi and wired devices. Is it worth it to spend the money?

Back in May of '25, Frontier Fiber jacked up my bill from $46.99 to $79.99; 70% increase. In Jan; three months ago, they bumped it up to $89.99. Earthlink fiber appears to be available in my area with a tier that offers 10x the speed of my old 50/50 plan for $10-$15 less. I'm going to see if I can leverage that information to get Frontier to up my 50/50 service and lock them into a better price for more than a year. Because there is such little competition in my area, these ISPs can call the shots and price gouge customers.

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Is anyone an Earthlink fiber customer? Are you pleased with their service.

Has anyone been able to combine these successfully. I realize it's an unconventional topology and it can produce a double natting situation but I would think it would work as long as both provide their own subnets.

Spectrum's routers have very limited administrative capabilities. Other than changing the SSID, its password, and DNS, there isn't much else one can do. There is no bridge mode setting. Maybe the Spectrum automatically goes into bridge mode when the Nest is connected to one of the LAN ports?

My girlfriend has Spectrum internet service. Despite several reboots and even tech support doing a reset remotely, the Spectrum router is not forwarding wireless traffic back to the modem's WAN. Wireless devices can see the broadcasted SSID but once connected to it, the status says "connected, no internet".

However, when a laptop is connected to one of the four LAN ports of the router, the laptop has no problems.

Does Spectrum push firmware updates remotely?

Is it possible an update corrupted and messed up just the wireless feature?

We're going to replace the router but I just found this to be odd behavior that only one aspect of the router works. I would have thought it would be all or nothing.

When adding Nest devices to a home network, do most people remove their ISP's provided router if it is a separate device from the modem?

Has anyone had any success keeping both?

I understand it's unconventional and it can produce a double natting situation but as long as the IP subnets do conflict would it work?