Two people, rural location, pfSense or NAS?
-
Hello,
Got a Asus GT-AX11000 running Merlin wich can be used as a NAS, but got two 8TB wich I can put in a I3-8100 build for a NAS, but unsure if I should rather use it for a pfSense box. Have no experience with networking beside a simple Merlin setup. What is tempting with a pfSense box is that it's not very expensive to upgrade to WiFi 7, as it's to buy a new router.
-
@AirTrailblazer For a NAS I'd recommend to check out TrueNAS, which will give you all the performance and features you could wish for. And moving to pfsense is of course a nice step up from any consumer router, regardless if you are running Merlin on it or not.
I would take a look at using Proxmox as a base, and then install both TrueNAS and pfsense as VM's on it, and then turn your ASUS into a wifi AP. Focus on using pfsense as the firewall and use AP's for wifi access. For best wifi coverage/performance you need to locate your AP's based on the house/apartment layout anyway. And the firewall is likely located some place where your fiber/cable terminates, which may not be the best location for radio coverage.
-
@Gblenn Thank you :-) Proxmox looks interesting indeed. The router is now located where the box would be. Works fine there.
-
@AirTrailblazer Well, then you can of course have both in the same location.
Regardless if you go with Proxmox or only install pfsense on the i3-build, I'd look for some dual or quad port NIC, preferably Intel based. -
@Gblenn Thank you :-) I have got the TP-Link TG-3468 for the time being.
-
@AirTrailblazer To make setup as smooth as possible you need at least two physical ports, and I assume then that you one additional port on the motherboard?
Then you would dedicate one port (TP-Link) to be used as WAN on pfsense, and the other will be used for multiple things on the LAN side, all managed by Proxmox. If you connect that "multi use port" to a switch to which all other devices and access points are connected, you have your network all set up.
When you assign ports to VM's in Proxmox, they get their own unique random MAC addresses (possible to edit) and thus their individual IP's assigned by the router (and later on pfsense).
-
@Gblenn Thanks a lot for superb help :-)