Switching to pfsense

[dturbes]

Hello I am building a pfsense router. I have a asus ac68u router can anyone help me  I am new to this, do I disable the asus one but I want to keep the wireless part  going. And then hook up the pfsense  router to my network and configure it?
Thanks
Dan

[heper]

what is your exact problem?

in general you disable dhcp on the consumer router & stop using its WAN port; instead you use the lan port on the consumer router.

[johnpoz]

So typical what you would do

Connect your pfsense to your modem that is in front of your ac68u, then use your ac68u as a AccessPoint only to provide you wifi.

so you have this

internet - modem - pfsense - switch and or ac68u switchports - wired devices and wifi

So you would give your router an IP on your network, lets call it it 192.168.1.0/24 so pfsense could be 192.168.1.1, your router LAN ip 192.168.1.2.. Turn off DHCP on your router!!!  Connect it to either your switch or pfsense lan port via one of its LAN ports.

Now anything connected to its other lan ports or via wifi would get IP address from pfsense dhcp, and use pfsense as internet gateway..

[P3R]

A nice high end router like the AC68U most likely have an access point mode that will probably simplify that part of the configuration for you.

[johnpoz]

"simplify that part of the configuration for you."

How is turn off its dhcp server and connect it to lan port not simple??  If it does have some "AP" mode wha they normally do is bridge the wan port to the bridge this already connected to your LAN ports from the wifi..  So while this might be useful if you need that extra physical lan port on your network..  Normally not needed…

[jahonix]

Best thing is their proposed antenna alignment

That makes for some solid AC streams, really!

This is what Ruckus notes to that:


[GruensFroeschli]

Well it's not wrong.
These antennas generally radiate perpendicularly to their shaft.
If you want to have multiple spacial streams, the chip needs a way to different the streams.
The two antennas left and right are shifted 90° to each other. In theory those two streams should not even interfere with each other in a pure LOS setup.
The antenna in the middle is shifted 45° to the other two, so has the optimal "distance".
If you have a 4th antenna, you'd put this one 90° to the middle one.

With only 3 antennas, the only better setup would be to have all 3 of them shifted by 60° (a triangle, or a star), with a slight local shift (say 10~15°).

[jahonix]

Nope.
Antenna polarization is crucial for good to better reception. You cannot just rotate it 90 degrees and expect the RX antenna to receive the signal clearly. You refer to configurations with antenna diversity like b & g standards. Or wireless microphones.
With n-standard we have multiple streams shooting in the same direction. Hence, the antennas have to have the same orientation.
Even more with AC where beamforming is used and that simply won't work at all with off-polarized antennas. It's a dilemma for handheld devices since you never know how user holds it currently.

[GruensFroeschli]

i'm talking about multiple spatial streams where polarisation is everything.
if you think that having multiple antennas with the same orientation will help you getting higher throughput, then you are mistaken.
getting a higher signal for a single stream: yes.
getting better distinction between multiple streams: no
Since you write that "multiple streams shooting the same direction", this is not mimo. this is stbc (space time block code) and doesnt increase bandwidth but allows for a more stable signal, given sufficient reflections to actually calculate a different transfer function of space. even in such a situation having different polarisation might be more beneficial.

a and b (and for that matter g since it's an extension to b) didn't have any mimo features. antenna diversity is a feature which allows the chip to receive a signal on either chain0 or chain1. you still only receive on a single antenna. this can only be used to counter fading in some cases. it's not able to take both received signals from both chains. If the signal on both chains is crap you're not able to receive anything.
this feature was added to the silicone with the n-standard and is called mrc (maximum ratio combining). with this, the chip may be able to calculate an usable signal out of the 2 (or 3) crap signals from each chain.

Since most mobile phones only have a single chains, having differently polarizend antennas will help you since usually at least one of them will be correct(ish) aligned.

mumimo is another topic entirely. for the most part it doesnt work (at least with the consumer grade devices most people have at home). usually because devices which boast mumimo support dont have enough antennas to actually make a difference in getting a directive signal.
what brings some gains on short distances are mcs rates 8 and 9 and wider channels (vht or ht80, ht80+80 and ht160). however there are almost no devices which actually are able to work at such wide bandwidths because of DFS and false radar detection.

[P3R]

@johnpoz:

How is turn off its dhcp server and connect it to lan port not simple??

Doing that isn't hard but the AP mode will do more things that will simplify the usage of it as an AP.

It will eliminate the possible mistake of plugging a LAN cable into the WAN port, it will add a LAN port, it will change the user interface so that it won't constantly warn about a disconnected WAN-port, and it will disable all the router settings that may be confusing for a person asking for help with this.

Your recommendation is relevant for all routers without AP mode but let's put it this way, what's wrong with using a setting that's in there for exactly the case the OP ask for and that will give him a better AP?

[jahonix]

Taken to PM to not steal OP's thread.