Home Network Multi-Gateway Architecture: Mihomo Fine-Grained Traffic Splitting in Practice

After half a year of tinkering with my home network, I finally got a multi-gateway redundancy architecture working. This article shares the overall design approach—it’s for people with some hands-on experience who want a more stable network.

Why You Need Multiple Gateways

The biggest problem with a single gateway is a single point of failure: if your VPS gets blocked, the line stutters, or the machine crashes, your entire network goes down.

The core value of multiple gateways:

1. Circuit redundancy: multiple exit points in the US / Hong Kong / Japan, automatically choosing the fastest one
2. Traffic separation: different traffic uses different exits, saving bandwidth while maintaining speed
3. Automatic failover: if one circuit goes down, others automatically take over without the user noticing

Overall Architecture

Home devices
    ↓
OpenWrt primary router (DNS routing → dnsmasq)
    ↓
mihomo gateway (routing rules → policy groups)
    ↓
Multiple VPS exits (US / HK / JP)
    ↓
Target websites

Key components:

• Primary router: OpenWrt, responsible for DNS hijacking and routing traffic to mihomo
• mihomo node: runs on a separate machine, handles proxying and routing logic
• VPS exits: I recommend DMIT—Hong Kong / US nodes have stable latency and support Xray + Hysteria2

mihomo Routing Rule Design

Policy Group Hierarchy

proxy-groups:
  # Manual selection group (emergency backup)
  - name: "Manual Select"
    type: select
    
  # Auto-select fastest node
  - name: "Auto Select"
    type: url-test
    url: "http://www.gstatic.com/generate_204"
    interval: 300
    
  # Regional groups
  - name: "🇺🇸 US"
    type: url-test
    filter: "US|United States"
    
  - name: "🇭🇰 Hong Kong"
    type: url-test
    filter: "Hong Kong|HK"
    
  # Routing decision groups
  - name: "Domestic Direct"
    type: select
    proxies: [DIRECT]
    
  - name: "AI Services"
    type: select
    proxies: ["🇺🇸 US", "Auto Select"]

Rule Priority

mihomo rules match from top to bottom, so order matters:

rules:
  # Local / LAN direct
  - IP-CIDR,192.168.0.0/16,DIRECT
  - IP-CIDR,10.0.0.0/8,DIRECT
  
  # AI services via US
  - DOMAIN-SUFFIX,openai.com,AI Services
  - DOMAIN-SUFFIX,anthropic.com,AI Services
  - DOMAIN-SUFFIX,claude.ai,AI Services
  
  # Domestic main domains direct (reduce latency)
  - GEOSITE,cn,Domestic Direct
  - GEOIP,CN,Domestic Direct
  
  # Everything else via auto-select
  - MATCH,Auto Select

DNS Anti-Pollution

This is the most error-prone part. Architecture:

Device queries DNS
    → dnsmasq (local cache + routing decision)
        → Domestic domains → 114.114.114.114 (direct)
        → Foreign domains → mihomo's DNS (queried via proxy)

The key is to avoid domestic DNS pollution of foreign domain resolution.

VPS Selection Tips

I’ve used many providers, and DMIT currently offers the best value:

FAQ

Q: What if all nodes time out?
A: First check if the VPS is reachable via ping (to rule out blocking), then verify your mihomo config syntax.

Q: Why are domestic websites slow?
A: Check whether your GEOSITE/GEOIP rules are active—your DNS queries might be routing through the proxy.

Q: How do I monitor latency on each node?
A: mihomo has a built-in API that you can integrate with Grafana for real-time monitoring.

Got questions? Feel free to reach out on Telegram or X.

Further Reading:

• Xray VLESS+XTLS Deployment Guide — Server-side protocol configuration
• VPS Selection Guide — Which VPS providers are best for exit nodes
• VPS IP Blocked—What to Do — Emergency solutions

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