Published May 9, 2026, 5:00 PM EDT Shekhar Vaidya is a veteran technology journalist and computer science engineer. He is the founder of TechLatest, where he has spent years providing technical analysis on hardware and Windows ecosystems. Now a Computing Writer at XDA, Shekhar leverages his deep background in NAS, storage solutions, and PC internals to help readers master their tech. For a long time, I thought a proper homelab needed segmentation to be responsible and professional, and setting up VLANs was the next obvious step. From all the Reddit threads and self-hosting forums I visited, I noticed the same thing: every advanced homelab seemed segmented. There was always an IoT VLAN, a trusted VLAN, and a guest VLAN. The more segments there were, the more serious it looked, and the complexity looked like maturity. I bought into the same mindset when I started building my homelab. I had everything I needed, such as a dual-wan gateway , switch, and router.…