How to keep Netgear Wifi Router as own DHCP to be able to keep Guest wifi network

[smokethrower2]

Hello all, brand new to pfSense and networking in general, but loving it so far. But I'm having trouble with setup with a wifi router and want to see if what I want to do is even possible or if I just need to buy another Wifi router to serve as a guest network on it's own VLAN or subnet interface in some form to isolate from the main lan.

Current setup is a cable model to my Dell Optiplex 5050 - I5 - 16gb ram 256 ssd that has a fresh pfSense install running WAN on the on board NIC and then LAN on the first port of the Intel I350-t4 4 port NIC pcie card with DHCP coming from pfSense. Then from pfSense to a 48 port switch, then from 48 port switch (not using all 48) going to offices and then once port goes to my Netgear Nighthawk ac2400 Wifi Router in AP mode. Before pfSense the Netgear wifi router had 2.4ghz, 5 ghz, and guest network with guest network isolated from the rest. But in AP mode it drops the guest network and it won't allow the guest network to run in AP mode.

So my question is, how to get a guest wifi network back without having to buy a separate wifi router to isolate in pfSense in some fashion. My thought was that I could hook the current Netgear wifi network to the 2nd port of the pfSense intel 4 port nic as a new pfSense interface and have that interface not have DHCP and take the wifi router out of AP mode and back to normal mode to have its own DHCP server and the 2.4 ghz, 5 ghz, and guest network again? But from what i've read in the past I thought it was bad to have 2 different devices handing running dhcp? And i'd need the 2.4ghz and 5ghz wifi networks to be able to access the main lan still but not the guest network. Netgear router is a AC2400 but i have a R8000 available too. Im trying to find more about vlans on those too in documentation.

I browsed the forums and found something similar to what im trying to do but it had no comment on if it really works, or at least properly. Any thoughts on this, pros/cons or if it's just completely the wrong thing to do would be appreciated. I will continue to try to find an answer and maybe ever try to see if i can get it to work on my own.

Thanks in advance for your time and help!

[rcoleman-netgate]

@smokethrower2 said in How to keep Netgear Wifi Router as own DHCP to be able to keep Guest wifi network:

So my question is, how to get a guest wifi network back without having to buy a separate wifi router to isolate in pfSense in some fashion.

See if your Netgear device can run a package like OpenWRT so you can do VLANs on your SSIDs.

[planedrop]

@rcoleman-netgate Yeah @smokethrower2 if you can install OpenWRT or something then this would make your life easier, otherwise just getting another AP is probably the easiest route to go (not saying there aren't other solutions though).