Both opnsense and pfsense allow custom DNS entries so you still have that as an option. Probably the other options do too but you’ll just have to verify.
But if you want to keep it simple I would just keep the pihole as a separate device. A lot of the built in options aernt quite as easy to setup and don’t have the best UI compared to pihole IMO.
Most of the more advanced gateways have some sort of DNS filtering built in. Opnsense has an adguard plugin, pfsense has pfblocker-ng, openwrt has a few different options, Unifi and mikrotik both have solutions too I think. Usually you can just load the same block list that pihole uses into the filtering software and you are good to go.
If you want the most flexibility and want to use the same hardware for both gateway/DNS and want to try out different DNS/router solutions a hypervisor would give you the most options. But it would also be the most complicated.
Another solution is to use NAT on the router. NAT all traffic from the client network 11.0/24 to the routers IP on the server network 10.0/24.
That way when the server sees the ICMP echoes on its 10.102 network it will look like it came from the router and send the reply back together router instead out its other interface.
Are you sure you are typing the address in correctly on android/ios? 198.162.x.x isnt part of private IP space.
If you’re looking for a more mature networking setup, I would definitely recommend splitting up your router, switch and AP duties into separate devices. It gives you the most flexibility for when you want to tinker or change things.
For a main router setup, I would recommend OpnSense. It’s has a cloud backup feature which allows you to automatically backup the configuration to a Google Drive xml file whenever it is changed.
The XML config file stores all your leases so you don’t have to worry about reassigning DHCP reservations. If you load the config onto a new system, like for an upgrade or if the router hardware fails, usually you just have to change the interface mappings and you’re good to go.
As far as APs/switches, I would recommend Unifi or Mikrotik. Unifi has a fancy dashboard you can use to adopt new equipment and restore/change configs from, but I find Mikrotik easier and simpler to backup and I like that i dont have to host a controller to make config changes.
I do something similar with opnsense and policy based routing. opnsense is acting as both a VPN client and server. The client interface connects out to a commercial VPN, and the server interface listens for incoming connections. Based on what I I want to accomplish I setup firewall rules that use policy based routing to route incoming VPN traffic where it needs to go.
Regarding split tunnel on the client, the Android wireguard app has the option to specify what traffic uses the tunnel based on the application
Is the NIC built into the motherboard or an add on pcie card?
You could check the journal to see if the logs tell you anything.
You could try taking some packet captures from opnsense and your server while accessing your externally available web server. Reviewing the pcaps might give you some hints on how fix it based on what behaviour you see in the captures.
This is how I would do it also, assuming you aernt passing the NICs through to VMs
Once you change your DNS server in your router, make sure to renew your clients DHCP lease. It may still be using the stale DNS server. On windows verify its using the new DNS server with: ipconfig /all
A custom router + managed switch is a great way to learn. Studying the fundamentals is also good, but in my opinion it’s not as fun as setting up your own network and learning hands-on.
If you decide to go this route I highly reccomend taking regular backups of your config (and backup again before you change stuff). Part of learning involves breaking things - trust me you will break your network - and in networking that’s one of the best ways to learn. Backups will give you an easy way to restore to a known working configuration.
deleted by creator
I have a laptop motherboard setup with proxmox running:
This is running on an i5-1135 with 40gigs of memory. If your frugal about how you have stuff setup you can pack alot of services into old laptops.
If your VPS can connect to your home router as a client it sounds like your wireguard server on opnsense is working correctly.
Might be a problem with your phones WG config. Have you tried taking the client .conf file from your VPS and loading it onto your phone to test a working config file?
Just because your using a VPN doesn’t mean you can’t isolate hosts to a separate network. I keep my services in a different VLAN and I can route/firewall traffic between that network and anywhere else as I please.
That’s true. I only use my vpn when I’m out of the house. And the only devices I have with me are my phone/laptop which both have official apps.
In android, for the wireguard/openvpn apps, you can add a button to your swipe down menu (where you toggle on/off wifi, flashlight, etc).
What’s so inconvenient about a VPN?
For future reading this “multiplexing” is called SNI inspection/routing and it can only be used when TLS/SSL is in use.
I’m partial to mikrotik gear, the CRS305 has 4 sfp+ ports for around $150.