I need some advice on how to set up my network. First let me describe what I am trying to do.
I live in a small home with my RV next it. When the RV is home, I have all network devices in it connected via an ethernet (MOCA) connection. Some of the devices in the RV are wifi only, so I have an MT1300 (Beryl) in the RV as a wifi access point. Wired devices in the RV are connected to an ethernet switch.
In my home, I have an MT6000 (Flint2) as an internet router. All internet traffic runs through a VPN client on the Flint 2, which also runs Adguard Home and Tailscale. All devices on the LAN are differntiated only by the 4th octet in the IP address. I have a Synology NAS which is also running Tailscale as an exit node. When I am away from my home, I use Tailscale on my phone or laptop and route the internet through the NAS exit node for a VPN connection anywhere.
When I travel in the RV, I also have an MT3000 which I use as a router. It is configured exactly the same as the Flint 2. I connect to the internet with it and plug it into the MT1300 and switch which gives me internet and a working LAN in the RV.
Here's my challenge. I would like to connect my RV LAN to my home LAN (most likely using tailscale). I would like to rout all of the RVs internet traffic through my home internet connection and would like to be able to connect to devices local to my home network from the RV and devices local to the RV from my home network, whether they are physically connected via ethernet or virtually connected via tailscale.
Running tailscale on every device is not an option. I have a printer and other devices that cannot run tailscale natively.
Is there a way of making the RV a different subnet than the home? For example, can RV devices have an address of xx.xx.001.xx and home devices have an ip address of xx.xx.002.xx? Does this require another routher? Is there someplace I can go to get an education in networking to do this? I know just enough to set up a plain vanilla LAN and that's about it.
You can do it via tailscale if you have a tailscale router (subnet router) on both ends (RV and LAN network). I helped a friend setup tailscale on his home connection (fibre) and his caravan (starlink - CGNAT) what we did was use a docker on his home network that was running on Linux. Then we used a mini pc in the caravan which has a Linux VM running (main os is windows) you could just use a raspberry pi - the reason we had to spin up a Linux VM was because the tailscale router mode was only available on Linux (and might still be). Once both tailscale routers were up and running we then allowed the routes so they could talk to each other. Install your tailscale client to your device and you should have access to both Lan address.
I personally would setup your home and RV with different IPs (you do this on each glinet router, in gui settings) I personally use the 10.10.x.1 range for my home as most networks are 192.168.x.1 so I want to avoid any possible IP clash if I am to remote home. Changing the 3 octet in the range is what most would do OR you can do a 192.168.x.x (RV) and a 10.10.x.x (Home) also statically assigning IPS will help, you can do that on the gui too Network > LAN > Address Reservation
Here is a guide I followed regarding tailscale. The key for me was having two tailscale routers (one on each LAN) otherwise I could only reach one side.
After saying all of this. If you are not behind CGNAT and have a public IP you can just run the Wireguard server on your flint and connect back via the beryl using a client config from your flint.
I'm going to study this for a while. Sometimes when I travel, I'll use Starlink with CGNAT so, I'll set up assuming that will be the case.
More requirements that I didn't address yet. The home wifi connection isn't strong enough to reach the RV and I would also like wireless devices to be able to seamlessly connect to either the RV wifi or home wifi. If I make the access point in the RV back into a router and keep the same SSID and password, will devices hook up to either?
I recall coming across something like a "site-to-site" feature in Tailscale which would be exactly what you are after but it is obviously not implemented in GL iNet GUI. Not sure if anyone here has seen it or got it functioning on their routers.
Yes setting the same SSID and password on both networks would result in clients switching however a client must make that decision, also keep in mind you would need to have a weak signal to help push the client / make that decision. Obviously when you switch networks you will then only have access to that routers Lan.
My home network and my travel router have the same WiFi SSID and password so that when I go away I don't have to reconfigure the clients and they just connect.
The only thing you need to be careful with is if your devices decided to stay on to the home network whilst you are sat in your RV. You might be trying to hit a local RV Lan IP in your RV but be unknowingly connected to your home LAN via the home WiFi SSID. if as you say your connection is totally lost between the house and RV, even when it's parked up then you should be ok, just worth keeping that in mind though. Also note that roaming is done via the client so it will depend if the client switches. If you don't have smart tech and just phones / tablets then you can just keep your SSID separate and have both networks (RV and Home) saved with the connect automatically checked in your phones setting, that way you get the same experience and you would know exactly which network you were on.
Thanks, It's actually the case where the two wifi networks have enough overlap that some devices could connect to one or the other. If I use Tailscale to link both subnets so they both act as local, would it matter?
In that case I would setup the RV as if you were constantly on the road and with starlink / tailscale. Set both networks (home and RV) with different subnet as described in my first post / setup.
Tailscale on both networks when parked up shouldn't have any effect if you have them going via different routers and network. Only downside would be is If you were transfering large files across a "local" tailscale network, it would actually be a relay and be slower but for day to day tasks it would be fine.
I would take your setup approach with the main priority of the network working at home and away (RV) being available all the time. If I was in your situation I would have the RV on its own network using starlink. The home network on a different subnet and both networks using different ssids. Keep them both completely separate from each other but use tailscale to link them together.
Trying to get clients to roam and cross communicate between networks with settings that are similar on both networks in close proximity is just asking for problems when you forget that is what's actually happening in the background.
Thanks for the advice. The only issue is that for economic reasons, I only activate Starlink when I travel. When I am at home and the RV is parked, the RV gets the internet from a connection to the home router.
It could still act as a separate network. I am not sure if a Tailscale connection would be redundant or not.