Installation issues
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Hello all. i used pfsense back around 2008 when i was in college but haven't touched it since. i am now trying to install it on my home network but having a few issues. initially my plan was to use an old PC i had laying around and install a dual port NIC card. it is a gateway FX6800 but when i try to install pfsense i get an adacontrol error and can't get any further so i deceided to change my plan. my other option was to install it in virtualbox through a Dell Precision T7500 server running Server 2008. my plan for that would be to use the dual port NIC as my pfsense LAN and WAN and the integrated NIC as my route to the Server 2008 host OS. my main goal was to use this for training purposes since i have not had much experience with firewalls since graduation (other than IPCop at my last job).
so i had everything set up on my T7500 in virtualbox as such: modem>wireless router>pfsense WAN>pfsense LAN>unmanaged switch. i understand with this setup i will not be capturing any wireless traffic but for ease of implementation this was my plan. i set my WAN to receive IP's through DHCP from my wi-fi router and set my LAN to 192.168.1.201. everything was working well on the LAN side and i could log in through my browser from my wireless laptop. the problem was that nothing attached to my unmanaged switch was connecting to my network. then last night for unknown reasons i can no longer access the GUI from my laptop. this morning i did a restore to default settings and set my interfaces and LAN/WAN the same as before and i still can't log in. i can ping 192.168.1.201 but can't access the interface?
so here is where i stand…i have pfsense installed in virtualbox on a Server 2008 host with the integrated NIC port and the dual port Rosewill RNG-407-DualV2 NIC. i have the virtualbox settings set to the following: Adapter 1 bridged using the integrated NIC and adapter 2 set to port 2 of my PCI NIC. i have tried several combinations of this with no luck.
i have my network adapters set in my host as follows: integrated NIC set to receive DHCP addresses from my wireless router (which it is doing). port #1 on my PCI card is set to receive DHCP addresses and port #2 is set to static using my 192.168.1.201 pfsense LAN port.ideally i would like to set this up as my router and have it provide DHCP services and have my wi-fi set as an access point and connect it to the pfsense LAN port but am afraid to try this with all of the issues i am having. i work from home and NEED my internet to be reliable. if i can get back to where i was last night and be able to access the GUI and get my wired devices to work connected to my switch then i would be ok. i would also be fine getting this to work on my FX6800 as a standalone (or even through virtualbox on it)
sorry for all the 'clutter' in here but trying to paint the full picture here
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well i am now able to access the web GUI again. not sure why. i swapped ports and tried with no luck then swapped them back again and it now works. i checked several times to be sure it was seated before so not sure what caused that but anyway….
so now if i can get my wired devices to be able to connect through my unmanaged switch i should be good? the switch is a Cisco SD2005 v3 if that matters. i currently have my pfsense LAN going into the Cisco switch. one thing i am unsure of is what traffic is on what ports? part of me things i have duplexing going on here but not sure how to verify that?
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looking around here i see that my LAN and WAN are indeed on 2 different ports so that is good. and looking at my host adapter settings config it looks like my host is using the 3rd port so that all looks good.
i see my one printer is now connected through my switch so that may now be resolved too. i have to check the rest of my attached devices (my wife apparently turned the printer off without me knowing…lol)
once i get the bugs worked out i may change this configuration and put pfsense in front of my wi-fi and set it to an access point so all of my wireless traffic gets filtered as well