VLANs from pfSense / OPNSense to DD-WRT Virtual Wireless Access Points for Home or Business

=== Links ===
Show Notes

Setup pfSense with DD-WRT VLANs in DD-WRT Forums

VAP Startup Commands for DD-WRT

Previous Videos:
Setting up VLANs in pfSense / OPNSense

Setting up DD-WRT as a "Dumb" AP

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=== Timestamps ===
00:00 Beginning
00:09 Introduction to DD-WRT and pfSense for VLANs
02:00 Thank you to my Patrons at Patreon, and my subscribers on YouTube
02:40 A Quick Review of VLANs in pfSense
09:04 Setting up DD-WRT for VLANs
11:55 Setting up our Virtual Wireless Access Points
14:40 Assign the Virtual Wireless APs to VLANs
20:20 Possibly Need some Startup Commands

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=== Attributions ===

[prahe]

Great video. I wish all of my instructors in school had your presentation skills

[paldo]

This is awesome. Been looking all over how to do this so that i can use the switch and wireless functions. Leaving openwrt to do the routing..

[sulaimangari]

Hello Brian, just want to say thank you for your contents. Your videos and notes helped a lot with my project. May God bless you.

[joecook]

fantastic!!! this video is exactly what i wanted to do. and now i understand vlan setup much better. and mostly how to get opnsense and the dd-wrt to work together with vlans. and bonus you showed the fw rules. thanks so much !

[marrr]

This method does not work. I tried to configure this on two router, one was a tp-link archer c9 and another one was an asus ac68u router running the same code as in the video. I could not get either one to work with this method.

[danieldewindt]

Grate video. It was fooling around in a black box before i saw your video.
Thanx

[marcone]

Looking forward to using this great information as i'm about to deploy the exact same setup. Thank you for sharing!

[Glatze]

Hi Brian, good stuff, well explained! For kids and IoT I defined outgoing rules, too. Normaly http and https (tcp only > https/udp is quic, what I do not want) should be enough. DNS and NTP should only be allowed to the firewall, that´s it 🙂. In my OPNsense I defined that only known hosts are allowed to get dhcp addresses for all networks/interfaces/vlan ´s except guests (guests can do what they want, because they only are allowed to access wan), so you forbit devices to get ip addresses in those networks. On the other side I defined device-groups that are allowed to access networks. When someone strange (for example an electrician) is in my house, he is not able to access any service in any of my networks except guests! For this to function you have to define all devices as reserved with ip and mac address and as aliases - that´s a little bit work, but with that you can create static firewall-rules for every device and/or every case (one specific client needs wireguard, another should be able to use tor). Such networking things are hard stuff. Thanks for your video 🙂

[cdoublejj]

nice topic, look forward to watching to see if pick up any new info

[thbx]

This youtube video covers exactly what I've been trying to do at my home. Seems my issue was using vlans larger than 15! DD-WRT AP would just lock up and need a full reset every time. You mentioned a way to mitigate this in the video but I don't think an explanation made it into the final vid. What exactly is going on with vlans > 15?

[JasonsLabVideos]

Good clean and easy to understand video ! Thanks for this !

[alldjp]

Thank you for this tutorial! I was finally able to get my virtual APs and vlans working on an old Archer C9v1 (which is also broadcom based). I'm not sure if it's the startup command that worked for me, or the section about setting bridge addresses in your show notes. For my setup, I did have to keep vlan 1 enabled to get internet to work at all. It might be because of the managed switch I have between dd-wrt and opnsense. Anyway, thanks again!

[xan]

Hi Brian. Thanks for the great explanation! I have a few questions for you.

1. What is the hardware behind the DD-WRT?
2. Do you have any resource saturation on the router that is running DD-WRT?
3. After all these months how well does it work?
4. Do you recommend using VLANs on a home router with DD-WRT?

Thank you!

[ziggypuppyproductions]

@AwesomeOpenSource I have a question about how to get 1 NIC out of my OPNSense box to handle 1 VLAN and a LAN. I don't have a second NIC card to drop in the OPNSense box.

[cwxuser]

Great videos Brian ! is there a chance to get another one with nginx proxy manager + unifi controller in separate vm...., having huge problem to get it work and forward all required ports to work :(.

[jashmaniar]

Hey Brian thanks for the explanation I just wanted to ask which Linux distro are you using?

[mrstanps]

Holy cow! Thank you for this! I do have one question though....I'm unable to get the management interface on any wired port; i can only access via wireless. Any tips or suggestions?

[deven]

@AwesomeOpenSource do you have only one Ethernet cable plugged into the AP? and if so is it on the VLAN port?

[jameswadsley]

This seems to leave a lot out. Every time I activate the new BR1, I can no longer connect to the WAP via Wifi or hardlined. My router Netgear R6250 does not show which cables are plugged in to which port so this is extremely confusing to me

[ravenseyeimages]

good video - I plan on watching your others on pfsense, but if I may ask, is there any advantage to using pfsense vlans over the ones in dd-wrt itself?

I recently got fibre connected, and was debating replacing the ISP router with my dd-wrt flashed linksys, then I started reading up on pfsense appliances and am thinking about that. However I am wondering if this is overkill. I would like to put my IOT devices on a separate vlan as well as have guest wireless. I have a newer linksys dd-wrt router that I am just using as a switch/AP off the ISP router for now, as well as an older Buffalo dd-wrt router that I use as a wireless bridge. Also have an Apple airport and another ISP supplied access point, the latter having wifi 6 and gives me my best speeds (on my iPhone 13)

All have their own SSD, but I would like to set up some sort of mesh network to increase coverage, preferably without having to purchase an off the shelf mesh system