NEED HELP: ProxMox + pfSense w/ PCI pass through - basic secure & segmented network

Thank you for teaching me. :slight_smile:

Sadly it does not even show up at all in pfSenseā€¦ may be time to explore opnSense? heh

I do not think switching from Pfsense to Opensense will improve wifi support. However, both FreeBSD and OpenBSD are based on BSD BSD has terrible wifi support; At least, that is what I have heard. So you can go ahead and try; it wonā€™t hurt anything.

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Yeah I know itā€™s a bit of a dumpster :fire: in general with WiFi and not really a supported use case. I

I have also read around how opnSense runs a bit newer version of BSD which sometimes comes with a little better hardware/feature support due to the newer base OS / kernel.

I am not at the level of being able to recompile linux kernels with updates yetā€¦ I am trying to slowly transition into using linux full time hopefully as I move forward in my new career path though. :crossed_fingers:

I think you meant both OPNSense and pfSense are based on FreeBSD.

OPNSense follows FreeBSD a bit closer than pfSense, but probably not by a lot.

For BSD routers, best thing is to connect an Access Point to them and just use it as the WiFi handler (layer 2), while your BSD box takes care of routing and DHCP.

Just sayin if youā€™re really tryingā€¦ FreshPorts -- net/wifibox: Wireless card driver via virtualized Linux (most likely not packaged for pf/opnsense) =)

Thereā€™s a also work on getting ipq40xx support in FreeBSD (including wifi support) but for now youā€™re probably better off getting an AP or running OpenWrt on a router as AP

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Something like this did cross my mindā€¦ I donā€™t see ath9k posted in the tables however. Does ath10k support ath9k by chance? ie. backwards compatible? or is each driver class independent in terms of supported devices? I imagine the latter, but idk.

Iā€™m a bit shocked. ath9k is probably among the best chipset to get for Linux, because the driver is blobless. Not so much ath10k. No idea howā€™s FreeBSD support, but agreed with diizzy, get an AP and a managed switch, it will make your life much easier and you are going to learn a lot.

The reason I didnā€™t suggest you run FreeBSD or OpenBSD from the start was because it takes a bit to get used to it and you are at the beginning of your journey. I did criticize pfsense a lot, but thatā€™s just me.

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Isnā€™t Pfsence just FreeBSD with a custom firewall added to it? I thought I read somewhere that Opensense was based on OpenBSD and Pfsense was based on FreeBSD. So I guess I was wrong about OpenBSD.

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Both pfsense and opnsense are based on FreeBSD. pfsense is using a bit older version, for stability purposes, opnsense follows closer, for hardware support. FreeBSD still has the most hardware support among all BSDs. OpenBSD was a fork of NetBSD back in early 2000s. All 3 are basically their own OS, their codebase is different enough to call them separate OS based on BSD.

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Yeah I know a proper AP is the way to go. :upside_down_face:

My one Netgear WAX206 router/bridge/AP combo unit covers our house well enough as it is centrally placed and was bought to replace our ISP-provided router that was too locked down for my purposes and also costing us an unnecessary $5/month. The WAX206 provides better coverage/features/performance moving us to WiFi6 so I am not unhappy with it.

In fact, I want to look into flashing custom/open firmware onto the WAX206 in the near future, but it will be a bad day if it gets brickedā€¦ though I do have a CH341A chip reader/flasher clip/etc if :poop: hits the fan and it happens to work out.

Being able to throw a wifi card in my ProxMox box would simply be a bonus being able to extend wifi on one side of our house a bit further past the garage, side yard, etc. I am using it more for tinkering and learning in general than anything, not anything I was counting on relying on.

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Hereā€™s an idea: make a linux VM, bridge it to pfsense with another vlan and use the wifi card on that VM instead. Now you have a new wifi network. A bit more overhead, but should get the job done, lmao.

Bonus: you can learn about openwrt doing that.

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