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23.1 Legacy Series / VLANs and 2 switches - Can you aggregate interfaces?
« on: April 20, 2023, 12:30:05 am »
I have set up OPNsense in a lab environment to try out. I have a situation I need to figure out before I can roll it out to my home network. I have two network switches - both managed. I have multiple VLANs set up. I have three different wireless access points spread around my home that run multiple SSIDs for most of the VLANs. All of the APs will be plugged into one switch. I have some wireless networks that are assigned to VLANs that will be handled by the second switch. Therefore I need to be able to access some of the VLANs on both switches.
I'd like to attach each switch directly to my OPNsense device via 10gb SFP+ ports (the firewall has two of those ports available). Since OPNsense assigns VLANs to interfaces, and it doesn't seem possible to assign an interface to more than one network port, what are my options? Is it possible through some sort of aggregation option?
I realize one answer is to run the firewall to the first switch and then the first switch to the second switch, but that seems to waste bandwidth of the 1st switch unnecessarily. A second answer is to use the layer 3 functionality of my switches and take the VLAN assignment away from OPNsense. I may go this route but will need to set up a DHCP server on the network as well as set up rules in the switches. That's certainly possible (and probably the most "professional" answer), but I'm hoping for a simpler solution.
Hopefully this question makes sense. I'm not an IT professional, so I might not be using the correct terminology to describe my situation. Thanks for the help!
I'd like to attach each switch directly to my OPNsense device via 10gb SFP+ ports (the firewall has two of those ports available). Since OPNsense assigns VLANs to interfaces, and it doesn't seem possible to assign an interface to more than one network port, what are my options? Is it possible through some sort of aggregation option?
I realize one answer is to run the firewall to the first switch and then the first switch to the second switch, but that seems to waste bandwidth of the 1st switch unnecessarily. A second answer is to use the layer 3 functionality of my switches and take the VLAN assignment away from OPNsense. I may go this route but will need to set up a DHCP server on the network as well as set up rules in the switches. That's certainly possible (and probably the most "professional" answer), but I'm hoping for a simpler solution.
Hopefully this question makes sense. I'm not an IT professional, so I might not be using the correct terminology to describe my situation. Thanks for the help!