Do I have to have the LAN interface?
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I have one WAN interface, a 4 VLAN trunk, and one other local subnet.
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igb1 is WAN. Enabled gets its IP from DHCP. Connected to a modem
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igb0 is LAN. Disabled, no IP setup. Connected to trunk port of a VLAN capable switch.
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V101-V104 are four VLAN interfaces on top of igb0. Each is enabled, has a /24 or smaller subnet, and a a DHCP server
My question is do I really need the LAN interface in pfSense? If I delete it, then the next time I map a port (like maybe ath0, a wifi card), it defaults to the LAN label.
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It's not necessary. LAN is just the identifier, you can rename it to whatever you want. If you delete it and add a new interface, it will go back as the LAN ID.
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If it were me, I would just keep it and leave it disabled. It would just be a good reminder that that's the physical port. I would also probably name my VLAN interfaces LAN-V101, LAN-V102, etc… so you include the name of the physical interface with the VLAN number. This might not be a big deal if you only have two physical interfaces (WAN and LAN), but if you had three or four physical interfaces and multiple VLANs on each, that might help to keep things straight.
