<![CDATA[New to pfsense. How to install between router and switch?]]>Hello.

I have an old desktop with a fresh install of pfsense 2.2 on it. It has an onboard gigabit lan and I installed a PCIe gigabit adapter in it for a total of two gigabit nics. The box itself has a dual core AMD @ 3ghz for CPU, 8GB of ram and a 128GB SSD so I assume it will be powerful enough to handle most anything I can throw at it.

pfsense installed fine and can see and use the both nics

I would like to install it like so:

Modem –-> Tomato USB Router --> pfsense --> Gigabit switch

I want the Router to handle DHCP, QoS, and NAT while I will primarily use the pfsense box for http caching and web filtering.

I live in a rural area with 4g internet and I want to implement a caching proxy to help decrease my house's internet usage as well as allow me to do monitoring and web filtering for the kids.

I can get it to work between the modem and router just fine, but not sure where to start to get it to work between my router and my switch.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

]]>https://forum.netgate.com/topic/83794/new-to-pfsense-how-to-install-between-router-and-switchRSS for NodeWed, 11 Mar 2026 00:55:19 GMTTue, 05 May 2015 22:58:55 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to New to pfsense. How to install between router and switch? on Wed, 06 May 2015 00:38:19 GMT]]>@deltix:

If your modem is one of those USB 3g/4g/ modems I would recommend to use it directly with PfSense if possible/compatible. PfSense can do everything you need without Tomato router. If your USB modem is not supported by pFsense try putting Tomato router in bridge mode. If that is not possible you might have to do double NAT. But you really want PfSense to handle everything.

Nah, it's an external 4g wireless receiver that is up on a 30' tall antenna and connects to my router's WAN port via ethernet cable.

]]>https://forum.netgate.com/post/542055https://forum.netgate.com/post/542055Wed, 06 May 2015 00:38:19 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to New to pfsense. How to install between router and switch? on Wed, 06 May 2015 00:37:17 GMT]]>@hda:

pfSense is a router too. Why do you need two routers in series (cascaded) ?

Well the biggest reason is because I have spent days and read tutorial after tutorial and I have not been able to get pfsense's QoS to keep my internet connection latency free when bandwidth usage is high… with tomato I am able to keep ping times under 100ms at all times... with pfsense ping times jump to 500+ regularly even with very conservative QoS rules in place.

]]>https://forum.netgate.com/post/542054https://forum.netgate.com/post/542054Wed, 06 May 2015 00:37:17 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to New to pfsense. How to install between router and switch? on Wed, 06 May 2015 00:09:26 GMT]]>If your modem is one of those USB 3g/4g/ modems I would recommend to use it directly with PfSense if possible/compatible. PfSense can do everything you need without Tomato router. If your USB modem is not supported by pFsense try putting Tomato router in bridge mode. If that is not possible you might have to do double NAT. But you really want PfSense to handle everything.

]]>https://forum.netgate.com/post/542049https://forum.netgate.com/post/542049Wed, 06 May 2015 00:09:26 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to New to pfsense. How to install between router and switch? on Tue, 05 May 2015 23:23:19 GMT]]>pfSense is a router too. Why do you need two routers in series (cascaded) ?

]]>https://forum.netgate.com/post/542044https://forum.netgate.com/post/542044Tue, 05 May 2015 23:23:19 GMT