HOW TO SETUP OPNsense: From First Boot to Fully Functional (with IPv6!)

From first boot to a fully functional OPNsense home network with both IPv6 and IPv6, come along for my basic setup guide! By the end of this video, you can have your brand new OPNsense router working at least as well as your old consumer router, and ready for some more advanced projects in the future!

Feel free to suggest the more advanced OPNsense projects in the comments or on my Discord!

My blog:

Support me on Ko-Fi if you enjoy my content and find it useful:

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
00:34 - Hardware
03:50 - First Boot Wizard
09:57 - Basics of IPv6 Delegation
15:02 - Debug Internet Connectivity
20:43 - DHCP and Router Advertisements
26:29 - Hardening DNS
32:15 - Hosting and Port Forwarding
37:04 - Next Steps

[hermitation]

I learned more about IPv6 through this video than through my own lazy Google sessions. Great job, thanks for sharing.

[NetBandit]

The one guy who gets that .local is reserved.

[KeithTingle]

You are a CLEAR communicator. I am sure you are not the only person advocating for IPv6 on YT but you are the only person I follow that covers this topic and its great, would love to see something similar for pfSense users, I am a little lost with IPv6 & pfSense

[bobcauthen]

Well done... no one has covered setup covering rules (including what WAN looks like) AND include IPv6. Thanks for making this!

[gjvdspam]

Yes! This is a proper vid. No music, good sound. You manage to explain in a nice manner, enthusiastic, clear voice, knowledgeable, to the point, the right ratio of prep and free willy. Like it a lot, learned a thing or two too.

[LilaHikes]

I bought a Protectli on my own accord 2 years ago for my home network. I've been an extremely satisfied customer. And OPNSense is a godsend vs the fork it is derived from.

Even though I have (obviously) already set mine up, I always get something new by watching these types of videos. Many thanks.

[vaughnbay]

Good vid! It is easy to see why the general computing public has stiff armed IPV6 for years. It is complex! You did a good job of explaining it.

[berniemeowmeow]

Great video! OPNsense looks a lot more intuitive than I was expecting. Will give it a try.

[sirsquirrel]

Dude. What a great video. I was trying to get SLAAC working in my environment and it was missing the Router Advertisements enablement. It’s all sorted now and I’m all fully up and running using ipv6. Todays objectives are complete 😎

[gzoechi]

I watched a few of your videos lately and find them quite educational and pleasant to watch. Great stuff. I'm also interested in the topics you mentioned at the end.

[martymccafferty]

Thanks for the IPV6 setup walk through.

[elcapitanomontoya]

New OPNsense user here - was losing my mind about port forwarding and was ready to give up before watching this. This is an excellent video for explaining how it works and getting it set up!

[UnderEu]

Suggestions for a next video:
- Going IPv6-only, how to add 464XLAT w/ NAT64 + Tayga for obsolete IP connectivity.
- IPv6 multi-homing: Using more than one WAN link and how to address that (no pun intended) on the LAN.

And that's not something you can provide on a single video but I wish every network/tech creator in this platform put the same effort as you for talking about the current Internet Protocol, instead of ignoring it with all their forces and continue putting even more content like it's 1970.

Keep up with the excellent work, the real hero of this platform regarding ACTUAL current IP technology. :)

[Felix-vehs]

25:14 if you leave the "Domain search list" field empty, the domain of the OPNsense hostname will be used.
And it is also possible to add multiple domains to the field :)

[freakbyte]

Easy to understand as usual, looking forward to the next OPNsense video. Thanks!

[Mikesco]

I'm really grateful for the info on IPv6, specially when you were talking about it in direct application, you already cleared a few misunderstandings I had.

[gustersongusterson]

Hell Yeah! Learning opnsense has been on my to do list. All the requested video topics on open sense that you mentioned are great. Maybe a short video about integration with Tailscale or headscale?

[rapacious_rapscallion]

One of the best OPNsense intro videos I’ve seen to date. Thanks for putting this together. Can you also tackle the topic of using wireless mesh routers as access points in an OPNsense environment in a future video? Thanks.

[dxbot]

OOH Yes! Can't wait for this series!

[MaigoManville]

Great video!
I hope you can cover hosting multiple web servers behind OPNSense and complete VPN setup next.