I have a configuration with 4 physical ports (nfe0, re0, re1, re2) in OPNsense, and I’m hoping you can help me organize my network setup. I’m specifically confused about configuring VLAN 3 for the 192.168.3.0 network between re0 and re1/re2. I don’t fully understand how to implement this and how routing will work.
I apologize for any spelling errors, as English is not my native language.
Here’s the layout of my network:
nfe0 - WAN
re0 ↔ Main access point for Wi-Fi (192.168.3.0/24)
I am assuming you are using a device which does not have all of the network interfaces together such as a mini PC.
If you want to connect multiple switches to different ports, you will need to bridge the interfaces together. However generally speaking it’s not usually recommended to bridge interfaces in software due to potential performance issues if the CPU of your system is throttling.
Network switches are bridged in hardware so can switch traffic much faster than doing it in software.
Therefore I recommend it may be better to connect both switches together and connect one of the switches to a single interface. Then you can create VLANs and route the traffic appropriately in OPNsense. If your interfaces are just 1 Gbps and you need a bit more throughput you could make use of LAGGs and create a LAGG across 2 or more interfaces (only helpful if you plan to have more than 1 concurrent stream of data that would exceed 1 Gbps— but each device is still limited to 1 Gbps max).