I am not very experienced with networking and as I build out my services on prem I have come to this community for help and support.
I have done a lot of reading about subnets and masking and the like and I semi-understand how it works and what I want to do but I don't know how to actually do it.
Thanks to this community I have a OPNSense Router that I installed on a desktop computer where I purchased a 2x1gb NIC to install. I've learned how to open ports and how to NAT/forward even with reflections for my https local services.
I just can't figure this out. I drew my network topology and put it here: https://imgur.com/a/XY8V5Sl
My wired network is 192.168.1.0/24 meaning 255.255.255.0. My wireless is Google Nest Wifi which limits me a bit. It is using 192.168.86.0/24. The gateway for both networks is my opnsense router 192.168.1.1.
I want to create a route between 192.168.86.0/24 and 192.168.1.0/24. I believe one way to do it is to use 255.255.0.0 meaning /16 but I don't know where to make that change and since the Google Wifi uses its own DHCP, i am not sure I can change that properly.
My preference is to leave Google Wifi alone (its a piece a shit, by the way, don't buy it) and my expectation is that I can create a route in opnsense to 'bridge' the two different subnets.
Am i correct? If not, can you help me understand? If i am correct, can you guide me?
Couple of things:
First, the subnet router for your wireless network is not 192.168.1.1. Given that the subnet mask is /24 and the subnet is 192.168.86.0, I’d guess that the subnet router for the wireless network is 192.168.86.1. Of course, you’ll need to verify that within your OpnSense configuration.
Second, by creating the two networks on OpnSense, each one likely already has a ‘default route’. On a Linux command line, the would be a destination of 0.0.0.0 with a gateway of 192.168.x.1. This means anything not meant for the local subnet (192.168.x.0) will gets passed to the subnet router.
Third, the firewall on the OpnSense router has to allow the traffic between subnets. This is likely your sticking point. You’ll need to visit the firewall admin area of OpnSense and configure each subnet to be able to pass traffic to/from the other. I’m a pfSense user, so I don’t know the exact steps in OpnSense. But these general steps should still apply.
In opnsense they divide up the rule categories into Floating, LAN, Loopback, WAN. In LAN i have rule which is allow any to any, so as I understand it all devices on the LAN can talk to each other. Thanks for the reply.