Basic setup question where a WiFi repeater / second network is involved

[EasyGoing1]

Hello,

I'm running OPNSense version 25.1.11 and it's essentially a stock installation with DHCP configured.

This is the layout of my network



The LAN port is connected to a WiFi access point and elsewhere in the house, there is a WiFi repeater which has two radios. One radio connects to my WiFi AP and the other hosts clients. So it's basically acting as a router, where the clients that are connected to the repeater get the network 192.168.16.0/24.

The issue is that I cannot communicate from the 192.168.1.0/24 network to the 192.168.16.0/24 network and I am wondering what I need to do to tell OPNSense how to route traffic from the 1.x network to the 16.x network.

Basically I need to tell OPNSense that traffic originating from 192.168.1.x and going to 192.168.16.x must get routed through 192.168.1.10

How do I accomplish this?

[Patrick M. Hausen]

1. Create a gateway.
2. Add a static route through that gateway.

Wouldn't it be easier to have that extender act as a bridge like most products do by default?

[EasyGoing1]

Wouldn't it be easier to have that extender act as a bridge like most products do by default?

That would be ideal if only it had some way of actually doing that ... This is the repeater that I'm using and the only interface that it has is a very basic setup wizard where it asks you if you want to set it up as an access point (where you would just use the Ethernet port on one side then WiFi on the other), or repeater mode which uses both radios. When you select repeater mode, it gets the creds for the wifi network that you want to extend, then it lets you customize the SSIDs for the extended network and tells you that the password is the same as the SSID that it is extending. And that's it. Nothing else can be configured.

[viragomann]

1. Create a gateway.
2. Add a static route through that gateway.

Also add an outbound NAT rule to the LAN for source = 192.168.1.0/24 and destination = 192.168.16.0/24.
Otherwise you will run into asymmetric routing.