Home network: pfsense needed?

Networking & Firewalls
1

Hi all. Great forum here, this is my first post. I’m a long-time Unix admin (mostly Solaris) and not a complete n00b when it comes to networking although I’m no expert.

I’d like to get some opinions on a plan to insert a device to run pfsense in my home network. I recently upgraded my NAS, and I now have a spare motherboard/cpu/ram that’s not worth much on the resale market so I was thinking of using it as a pfsense device.

Motherboard: SuperMicro X9SCM-F
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1245 v2 3.40GHz Quad-Core
RAM: 32GB ECC

The mobo has two onboard Intel 1G nics (along with a BMC nic to run headless). The CPU supports AES-NI according to the Intel ARK site.

Assuming the HW listed above is good enough to run pfsense, here’s my current setup:

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From what I’ve read, pfsense can support PPPoe so that makes me think the pfsense device can just replace the ISP provided ‘modem’. Then the Velop main node will need to be reconfigured somehow to possibly bridged mode or something to not act as a router/dhcp server and just do WiFi?

The main benefit I see it that I can run a VPN on pfsense and have better security plus avoid my ISP blocking access to certain sites/traffic as they wish. Will my wireless laptop run into issues when I try to connect to my work VPN (cisco AnyConnect) if there is a VPN running already on the pfsense device?

Also, I recently ran a snoop on the NAS 10G interface, the 3 Shield devices I have are relentlessly spamming my network with MDNS broadcasts for chromecast. I’d like to somehow isolate that traffic or at least tone it down.

FWIW, The three shields run Kodi to play stored media from my NAS via NFS and occasionally play youtube or Amazon prime.

I’d like to avoid the complexity of VLANs if at all possible, I’ve never worked with pfsense before.

Thanks for reading, would love to hear any thoughts/suggestions.

2

If you don’t want to use VLANs then you can use multiple switches to isolate devices. The VPN on your system behind pfsense should not be impacted by having a VPN on your pfsense. Not really sure how well the PPOE works as we rarely use it. Here is my getting started video that might help.

3

I’m running pfSense with PPPoE I still need to use a modem.

If you suss out vlans, then you can more easily segment your network. However, your switch and wireless needs to support vlans. If you are going to buy new kit I’d suggest ensuring it can handle vlans, it will still work if you don’t initially use vlans.

Your idea ought to work, if you are able to configure all the rules etc. The Velop should have some kind of Access Point mode, if so, it should just work.

Good luck !