OPNsense Forum
Archive => 16.1 Legacy Series => Topic started by: jerrac on March 03, 2016, 06:23:18 pm
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I was able to get OPNsense working on my wired network, but when I tried to add my router into the mix, I ran into lots of problems.
What I want to do is:
From outside my network, I want the connections to look like this: Cable Modem -> OPNsense firewall -> Unmanaged Switches. All my devices, including my wireless router should connect to the switches. So, wireless devices would look like: Cable Modem -> OPNsense firewall -> Unmanaged Switch -> Wireless Router -> Device
Could anyone explain how to do that, or point me to some docs that would help? I did read through docs.opnsense.org. And the topics I found about wireless related issues on here, pertained to setting up wireless connections on the firewall, not dealing with a router.
I was able to get my wired devices to work with that set up. I also tried modem -> firewall -> router -> switches. I was able to get my router to create a wireless network. But none of my wireless devices could get through to the internet. Plus I had issues getting to the routers configuration page, since opnsense gave it a different ip than what it served the config site on... Thus, I had issues with DHCP server conflicts and mac address clone issues...
My router is a NETGEAR WNR3500L N300 running DD-WRT v3.0-r27520M (07/17/15) kong. And I'm using two TP-LINK TL-SG108 8-Port 10/100/1000Mbps Desktop Switch's.
Sorry for the lack of detail in what I tried, I was just trying random things without really thinking about it. Which is a really bad way to figure things out... :-[
Thanks for any help in advance. :)
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I found this guide (https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Use_an_existing_wireless_router_with_pfSense) to be useful when trying to achieve the same thing, but you have to carefully read the instructions.
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I use DD-WRT, I think I can help you. I assume you want wireless devices to behave like the wired devices in terms of network, if so this is call infrastructure mode on your wi-fi.
Firstly, you should let OPNsense handle all the DHCP and DNS. You're not going to use those functions on your wi-fi router.
In DD-WRT, under Basic Setup, you're going to set connection to Disable - you're not going to use the WAN port.
In network setup, you're going to give it a static IP outside your OPNsense DHCP range. If you need help here, just let me know if you're using 192.168.1.x (default for OPNsense), 10.0.1.x or something else. In theory, you could give it DHCP, but a static IP makes it easy to get into the interface and remember. For me OPNsense is 10.0.1.1 and my wifi is 10.0.1.2 - easy to remember.
In Wifi make sure the wireless mode is AP - Access Point aka that Infrastructure mode we're looking for.
You'll plug the wifi router into your switch with one of it's LAN ports and that ought to do it in a nutshell.
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I found this guide (https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Use_an_existing_wireless_router_with_pfSense) to be useful when trying to achieve the same thing, but you have to carefully read the instructions.
Thanks, that worked. :)
@smajor, what you described is pretty much what I ended up doing after reading the pfsense doc page. Thanks for the reply!