pfSense Network Issue
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Good Morning, Afternoon Or Evening Everyone.
I have an i5 laptop I have designated to be my pfsense box. Not VM but full blown box. Laptop has one NIC internally and I bought a tp-link UE300 usb 3.0 to gigabit adapter. I can't seem to figure out how to assign this a a LAN or WAN interface.
Please Help, TIA
Derek
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Hi !
pfSense on a laptop ?
What about that xx years old PC and a 5 $ extra NIC ?? !!
The story is : do not use USB type hardware stuff. That was designed for MS and maybe Apple. Not for FreeBSD.edit : if you really have to use this laptop, hunt down on Youtube that video that discusses a single NIC pfSense install , using VLANsand a VLAN aware 'smart' switch.
Disable the Wifi thing in the laptop with the BIOS. -
@Derek_NOS This is the video that he's talking about in the post above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z59_MWWPL-Q
Jeff
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@Gertjan whats the min requirements for a hardware box? I have old computers all over but thought the laptop would require less space.
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@akuma1x thanks jeff not looking to get super techy not much room in my home office thats why I selected the laptop idea but might have to go to an old pc. Wanted to use less space but want a pfsense box to run my home and home office off of.
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As @Gertjan says do not use USB. I can personally tell you that is not the best idea. It might work, but you can also get unexpected issues. When I was first starting out with pfSense I tried that on a tiny mini PC and well if you want to know how that went, I stopped doing that pretty quickly. Details here in case you really want to know, https://forum.netgate.com/topic/122317/solved-pfsense-is-not-making-sense.
When you are new to pfSense, there is already a learning curve, so you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot like I did by using unsupported (not officially supported) hardware like a USB nic.Hardware requirements are minimal. Even a 10 year old PC will be overkill for most common applications. I can also vouch for that because that was what I did after the mini PC issue. The only issue with that will be power usage. If you're not concerned about power usage, go with the old PC and cheap PICe add on intel nics (preferably intel). Watch out for fake intel nics being sold online. If power usage is an issue, the laptop with the VLANs on a single interface as suggested above could be a good choice too.
Edit, I forgot about the AES-NI requirement. A really old PC may not support AES-NI so that could be an issue later on down the road when it does become a requirement. Make sure whatever you end up making your permanent hardware has a CPU that supports AES-NI. In the meantime if you want to get something up and running and play around with, it won't matter.