pfSense
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:author: tyrel
:category: Tech
:tags: networking
:status: published

This week I finally got a machine that is solely to run pfSense. 
I didn't want to spend _too_ much money so I bought a $200.00 Qotom Firewall Q330G4.
This was great and easy to set up.

First I bought a Netgear WAC104 and installed OpenWRT on it. Simple enough.
Then I put that into bridge mode, so it's just an Access Point and not a "smart" router too.

Then I put my Linksys EA9300 into bridge mode and behind the pfSense machine (into a switch) and couldn't access any of my server's sites.

After futzing with that for a couple days, I finally figured out the problem.
I thought I was behind a double NAT, but I wasn't. When I moved my EA9300 from my sole WiFi router, to behind the pfSense machine, I neglected to change some settings on my AT&T modem.

You see — dear reader—  when I set up this network on my AT&T Modem, I had to enable Passthrough mode.
This, was set to a MAC Address, not an IP Address.
So when I was making sure to keep my IP network on the same 192.168.1.1/24, I thought that was all I needed.

Alas, there's a dropdown to pick the MAC address of the machine that everything passes through.
I can now access my bookmarks, notes, ebooks, and plex server!


Thanks to my friend Daniel (@sanitybit) - who was a great rubber duck and gave me some pointers when I was debugging, and also helped me find the hardware for the pfSense box!