First time Firewall network setup

Networking & Firewalls
1

Hello everyone,

I am a newbie and I’m expanding my home network for the first time. I have some questions on how to approach installing firewall on my network.

Currently I have a Spectrum wireless router. A Unifi POE switch is connected to this Spectrum router. A UniFi POE switch has UniFi AP PRO and Cloud Key Gen2 for camera’s is connected.

I want to put Protectli firewall. I’m not sure if the following setup is a good approach:

Remove current Spectrum router. Install new Arris SB6183 router. Connect the Arris router to Protectli FW6B. After that I want to connect to my old Spectrum router for wifi and also the existing UniFi POE swtich.

  1. Do I connect old spectrum router to OPT 1 on my Protectli? Then connect existing UniFi POE switch to old spectrum router?

  2. Or do I get another UniFi Swtich and connect that to my Protectli. Then connect my Spectrum router and the existing UniFI POE switch to the newly acquired UniFi switch?

any insight or help truly appreciated.

Best Regards,
Nickolas

2

I would trade in all spectrum equipment for just a modem from spectrum. You don’t need the spectrum Wi-Fi device as you have UniFi?

I would connect modem —> firewall —> everything else.

This assume the firewall does dhcp and such.

3

If you are as described, I would first set up pfsense and play with it before you change anything. You just need modem-pfsense-switch once you are comfortable with it your optimal solution will present itself! Took me 3-4 months to setup pfsense in the way I wanted.