Just go live pfsense. A few hickups needed help

bthoven

Thanks again for all your replies. It seems the problem of accessing Archer C9 admin page after disabling dhcp is a common one as seen in this thread:
https://awesometoast.com/archer-c9/
Still not sure how to solve it; though both wired and wireless connections to Archer C9 work fine.

johnpoz

Not sure where you got that from - its one guy that said that... You know what happen, his client he connected to didn't get an IP address because he had NO dhcp server running ;)

I have been doing this since there was wifi router, back in the B wifi days... Disabling dhcp server is not going to stop you from talking to the IP address you set on the thing ;)

But yeah your going to have to have an IP on your client with the correct ip and mask to talk to the IP you set on the thing ;)

bthoven

Okay, thanks. I will have to detach it from pfsense box, reset it, assign fixed ip 192.168.2.2 (or .254), disable dhcp, change wifi ssid/password... and plug it back. May have to wait till my family are all sleeping to do that :)

johnpoz

only if your having issues talking to it because of the dupe IP.. If you can log into currently no reason to disconnect it

Why do you think you need to change the ssid, and reset??

bthoven

@johnpoz said in Just go live pfsense. A few hickups needed help:

only if your having issues talking to it because of the dupe IP.. If you can log into currently no reason to disconnect it

Now I can't talk to it. It doesn't even show in the dhcp lease list.

Why do you think you need to change the ssid, and reset??

No, I don't want to change the ssid; as now I can't talk to the wifi router, I may have to reset it to factory default before doing the setup again with same ssid, but with different fixed LAN IP, and dhcp disabled.

Sorry for any confusion I may have made.

johnpoz

why would it show up in the dhcp lease? Ever? The lan IP of all wifi routers is set as static.. kind of hard to run a dhcp server when your also a dhcp client..

No you wouldn't have to reset it.. You might need to disconnect it from your network and connect to its switch or wifi to see its mac.. Or you could always just manipulate your clients arp table - delete the mac of the pfsense for .1 currently and let it re arp and see if you get the mac of the AP.. Or you could always set a temp static arp with the AP mac for whatever IP you wanted to use to get to it..

But sure if temp removal from the network and resetting is what you want to do - then sure that will work as well :) just not really required any down time to change is IP.

stephenw10

If it was using the same IP as pfSense I would expect to see that reported in the system logs when responds to ARP requests at the same time pfSense does.

Steve

bthoven

Thank you for all your support.
I disconnected my wifi router and reset it. Disabled dhcp, then reconnect. Everything works fine. I set its LAN ip as 192.168.2.254, with dns server 192.168.2.1, my pfSense router IP; also reserved the 254 IP in pfSense dhcp; and the status in pfSense Status->DHCP leasing page is online. What strange is when I connected my laptop at home, I can access my wifi access point web config; but it can't be accessed via openvpn on public internet. On openvpn, I can access other local devices by local ips without problem, except the access point (tplink Archer C9 wifi router with disabled dhcp).
Any additional setting I need to make? Thanks

johnpoz

Do you have a gateway (192.168.2.1 pfsense) set on the wifi router? If not no you wouldn't be able to access it gui remotely, ie your vpn tunnel network.. You would have to create a port forward so you could source nat the traffic so the wifi router thinks your coming from the pfsense 2.1 address.

bthoven

@johnpoz thank. Yes, the gateway was set to pfSense ip (192.168.2.1).
Also set port forwarding on pfSense, still can't access from public internet (neither with/without openvpn connection).

Gertjan

@bthoven said in Just go live pfsense. A few hickups needed help:

Also set port forwarding on pfSense, ....

No need to.
I can access my AP's (192.168.2 - 192.168.2.3 - 192.168.2.4 ....... 192.168.2.7) just fine from a device (PC) on my LAN (192.168.1.17 - pfSense is 192.168.1.1/.24).
Never tried to connected to them - their WebGUI - using OpenVPN, from the outside, but I guess it works just fine.

What are your firewall rules on the OpenVPN interface ?
Rules on the OPT1 interface ? (these shouldn't matter normally).

edit :
Connected my Phone using OPenVPN to pfSense (from the outside) and visited an AP 1292.168.2.2 : works just fine.

johnpoz

Les see these settings on your AP for this gateway. Your running 3rd party firmware on it? I do not recall ever seeing native firmware that allows for setting a gateway on the lan interface.

What port forwarding did you set? It is done different for a source nat..And would ONLY be required if your AP didn't support a gateway. And its not really a port forward, it would be an outbound nat on your inside interface.

Please post screenshot of your AP lan interface settings. And delete any port forwarding you might of setup to access your AP..

Also lets see your lan rules - your not sending stuff out some gateway on the rules are you? They are the default any any rule? Yoru not going to want to open up your AP gui from the public internet!!!

stephenw10

No default route would be my guess too. Or maybe some local firewall restriction.

You could probably workaround both with an outbound NAT rule on the pfSense LAN but it would be better to fix the AP.

Steve

bthoven

@Gertjan Thanks for testing yours. I search the net and found a lot of TPLink users facing this issue. Strange.

bthoven

@johnpoz
I'm running TPLink stock firmware. You are right, there is no gateway setting on LAN setting page. I set it on DHCP page which I was not supposed to set; but I did because, if not, it will default to TPLink Lan IP (254) instead of PfSense IP (1) and all the wifi connected devices will not be able to have internet connection. I know it sounds silly, but true.

My pfSense LAN rules are all automatically populated. No tweak.

One question, should I disable all firewall protection on my TPLink? Not sure it is relevant.

bthoven

@stephenw10 said in Just go live pfsense. A few hickups needed help:

No default route would be my guess too. Or maybe some local firewall restriction.

You could probably workaround both with an outbound NAT rule on the pfSense LAN but it would be better to fix the AP.

Steve

Thanks. How to do that?

johnpoz

Yeah like I thought - see your lan settings, there is not gateway there. So when you talk to this device, from something other than 192.168.2.x it has no idea how to get back to you.

You have a couple of options

put 3rd party firmware on it that allows you to set a gateway on the lan interface. Say dd-wrt if your tplink support that
use source natting on pfsense so traffic from other network, or your vpn tunnel network looks like it comes from pfsense 192.168.2.1 address.

How do that is with outbound nat on our lan interface..

switch to hybrid outbound nat, and add a rule using your lan interface with a destination of your tplink 192.168.2.254 and source as your tunnel network, interface as the IP..

Like this. Keep in mind your settings will be slightly different to keep with your setup. But I have multiple local networks... So if I ping on a IP in my dmz segment 192.168.3.31 from a box on my lan 192.168.9/24 and capture that with sniff on the .31 box you can see the IP is coming from my 192.168.9 address

root@pi:/home/pi# tcpdump icmp -n
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
07:54:01.567454 IP 192.168.9.100 > 192.168.3.31: ICMP echo request, id 1, seq 757, length 40
07:54:01.567771 IP 192.168.3.31 > 192.168.9.100: ICMP echo reply, id 1, seq 757, length 40
07:54:02.573583 IP 192.168.9.100 > 192.168.3.31: ICMP echo request, id 1, seq 758, length 40
07:54:02.573898 IP 192.168.3.31 > 192.168.9.100: ICMP echo reply, id 1, seq 758, length 40
07:54:03.580602 IP 192.168.9.100 > 192.168.3.31: ICMP echo request, id 1, seq 759, length 40
07:54:03.580892 IP 192.168.3.31 > 192.168.9.100: ICMP echo reply, id 1, seq 759, length 40
07:54:04.586562 IP 192.168.9.100 > 192.168.3.31: ICMP echo request, id 1, seq 760, length 40
07:54:04.586852 IP 192.168.3.31 > 192.168.9.100: ICMP echo reply, id 1, seq 760, length 40

Now if I add source nat via outbound nat so anything coming from 192.168.9/24 going to 192.168.3.31 looks like the pfsense IP connected to the dmz network 192.168.3.253

And I ping it again - you see that its coming from the pfsense IP address and not 192.168.9.100

root@pi:/home/pi# tcpdump icmp -n
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
07:52:19.736323 IP 192.168.3.253 > 192.168.3.31: ICMP echo request, id 36431, seq 753, length 40
07:52:19.736638 IP 192.168.3.31 > 192.168.3.253: ICMP echo reply, id 36431, seq 753, length 40
07:52:20.742098 IP 192.168.3.253 > 192.168.3.31: ICMP echo request, id 36431, seq 754, length 40
07:52:20.742416 IP 192.168.3.31 > 192.168.3.253: ICMP echo reply, id 36431, seq 754, length 40
07:52:21.748461 IP 192.168.3.253 > 192.168.3.31: ICMP echo request, id 36431, seq 755, length 40
07:52:21.748756 IP 192.168.3.31 > 192.168.3.253: ICMP echo reply, id 36431, seq 755, length 40
07:52:22.755955 IP 192.168.3.253 > 192.168.3.31: ICMP echo request, id 36431, seq 756, length 40
07:52:22.756239 IP 192.168.3.31 > 192.168.3.253: ICMP echo reply, id 36431, seq 756, length 40

bthoven

Wow...thanks it is working now! Is it the right setting?

johnpoz

Well if its working - I would have to say "yes" hehehe

You understand your source natting to ALL of your 192.168.2 network with that.. Which might not be a big deal, but if you have stuff on your network that you might want know the IP that is talking to it from your vpn, or might want to firewall on the box, etc.

Its normally better to be as specific as possible with rules, vs blanket sort of cover all sort of rules. I assume your other devices on your lan use pfsense as their gateway... And don't require the source nat.. So your dest should be more directed 192.168.2.254/32 so it only source nats to your wifi router IP.

edit: I see you changed it..

bthoven

@johnpoz Yes, I saw it covered all. So I changed it to be specific to 254 only. Thanks a lot. I'm noob to network; you patience and detailed explanation are really appreciated.