Pfsense firewall only setup w/ seperate linksys router & cable modem
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I am new to pfsense and recently purchased a pfsense appliance to add as a firewall to a small LAN setup. The current LAN setup consists of a cable modem going in to Linksys router, which in turn connects wireless to other extenders. I am trying to add the pfsense appliance as a firewall only to my network and let my current router continue to handle the networks wireless functionality as well as dhcp. So the new setup would then be cable modem in to the first LAN port of the pfsense appliance (which I would set up as WAN) then out of the second LAN port of the appliance I would run another ethernet cable in to the WAN port of the Linksys router. From searching the net I have gathered indications that running the pfsense appliance as a transparent firewall /bridge may be the way to go, but am unsure since this would be my first setup. Thank you and any help or guidance that could be provided would be greatly appreciated.
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If you're only keeping the D-Link for WiFi, then put it after pfSense and use it just as an access point.
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Really the best thing is to set up your hardware like this:-
Modem - pfSense - Lan & wireless router
Personally, I agree with JKnott - unless you have a very good reason for keeping DHCP/DNS on the Linksys then you'd be better off keeping pfSense visible and reconfiguring the Linksys as a dumb access point. Giving the Linksys less work to do helps mitigate some of the many security holes present in SoHo routers. Once set up, you can also pretty much forget about it apart from changing the wifi key every so often. Since the main interface for what's going on in your network will be pfSense it doesn't make a great deal of sense to separate the responsibilities.
