Internal wifi and external access points on same subnet

frankiboy

I'm in the process of setting up networking in my home, using pfSense for the first time, but I'm struggling to understand how this can be solved (or if it's possible at all). I've tried to search the internet for similar topics, but have failed to find anything useful.

To cover my home I need three wireless access points. I have two wireless routers (Linksys EA6900), any my firewall (running pfSense) has en internal wireless card (Atheros AR9382 AR5BHB116 minipci-express 802.11N ABG 2x2 MIMO 300 Mbps). So I want to use the internal wireless card as the third access point so I don't have to buy an additional access point.

I have wired ethernet throughout the property with managed ethernet switches, so I plan to put all access points on the same VLAN. However, I don't see how I can put the internal wireless on the same VLAN. I guess I can bridge the wireless and ethernet interface (Intel 82574L) and tag everything from the wireless card with the correct VLAN, but I haven't found if this is possible or how to do it.

My goal is to use the same SSID for all access points, so clients can seamlessly switch between the different access points. My assumption is that this requires all devices to be on the same subnet.

So is this possible? Am I trying to do the wrong thing?

Thanks!
Frank

frankiboy

So I found this post, which ask the same thing as I'm asking.

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=102569.0

Found it after posting this, so apologise for starting a new thread.. Anyway, this one does not have any answers other than "you are doing the wrong thing…". Saving $100 on another access point is good enough reason to do this, unless it's a bad idea.

pLu

You will have to bridge the internal wireless card. It works fine but is easy to get wrong if you move LAN to the bridge interface.

I'm using a bridge but haven't bothered to move LAN to the bridge interface so my internal wifi will go down if the LAN port goes down. No big deal at home.

johnpoz

EA6900's are a bit more than $100, I show them on amazon for $171.. So you have 2 of these and more than 1 managed switch..

And your trying to skimp out on a few bucks vs getting another AP?

"Am I trying to do the wrong thing?"

I would have to say yeah your going about it wrong ;)

Also your 2 EA6900's are AC.. Wouldn't you want your 3rd AP to also be AC.. Going to be a bit of an issue having same SSID on 2 of your AP doing AC, and then your third only doing N.. I can understand saving a few bucks.. But we are not talking getting a $1k AP.. You could get a unifi next gen AC-Lite model for under your $100 mark for sure. Or you could go with any AC wifi router that can be had for half of that $100 mark and use it as AP..