Correct Appliance - Multiple Wireless WAN feeds
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I am looking for an appliance to manage the feeds from multiple ISPs. Sort of like a load balancing router. However, the rub is the WANs are only available via a wireless 'join' or access method (Starlink, and USCellular are two of them). So the appliance must attach to the WAN wirelessly and then perform its role, and then make the connection to a LAN. Hopefully that makes sense, Can anyone help point me to a preferred appliance?
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@kramer9 Wireless is really bad in the FreeBSD operating system that pfsense runs on. It is ALWAYS recommended to not even try it with an appliance or DIY build.
So, do these wireless "join devices" have ethernet ports you could feed into a pfsense box? I pretty sure the Starlink boxes have this (internet research tells me so), not sure about the other stuff. After that, it's really easy to setup a multi-WAN system.
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/multiwan/index.html
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@akuma1x They do not, thats the major rub. Starlink only has wireless, its one of the nuances of the ISP offering
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@kramer9 Then you could always do a wireless-to-ethernet bridge type of device. I know it's kinda kludgy, but it works.
Here's an example:
https://www.amazon.com/GL-iNET-GL-MT300N-V2-Repeater-300Mbps-Performance/dp/B073TSK26WYou can setup this box (or another/better model) to connect to the wireless networks from the ISP modems, then run an ethernet cable to the pfsense box. And voila, dual (or multiple) WAN connections.
I've got one of these things, and I tested it to tether my iphone to it, then ran a network cable into a port on a pfsense box. Worked just fine.
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@akuma1x Also did some tinkering and actually plugged into the covered aux port of the wireless hub that starlink sends out. I guess I can use that as the WAN-In to the PFSense/Netgate device and then do the load balancing there. Even though I can not disable the SSID from the starlink, I can make it just about impossible to join :) - now to find the correct piece of hardware to manage 3 incoming ISPs, or nix one and just do 2, into one mesh lan network
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@kramer9 You can easily do 3 WAN connections. Your pfsense box has to either have enough physical ports (3 for WAN and 1 for LAN), or you have to use VLAN connections, and then it gets somewhat complicated.
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@akuma1x Many thanks! Order placed for a SG-3100, looks like it will meet the need.