RT-AC1900P

[3eezie]

Hello,

I have a Asus RT-AC1900P and recently got a Netgate SG-1100 firewall i want to use. After setting the asus to work as a AP, will i still be able to use the features that come with the router like using a external drive as a NAS or cloud storage?

I have 17 years in IT on the desktop support side but very little networking experience so please for give m,y nobleness.

 

[Tech9]

USB share is available in AP Mode, not sure about AiCloud. Not really a NAS though. Any other routing related feature will be unavailable as well as Guest Network separation from main network. Home routers with no VLAN support don't make good APs to VLAN capable appliance. You perhaps may want to replace it with some SMB AP down the road and get a real NAS if needed. For SG-1100 - some AX1800 class AP around $100.

 

[3eezie]

Is is possible to use the Netgate without setting the router to work as AP?

 

[Tech9]

It depends on what you want to use the Netgate appliance for. It's a router/firewall with limited capabilities, the smallest Netgate device, can do about Gigabit basic routing and about 500Mbps or less with packet processing, not sure if it can run IDS/IPS at all (Snort, Suricata packages) with the limited 1GB RAM available. If you want to see all network clients on the Netgate and do some sort of selective routing or VLAN segmentation - the clients have to be attached to it directly via switch (wired) or access point (wireless). If you have your Asus in Router mode behind Netgate - it will see one client only, your Asus router. Your clients then will be behind double NAT with whatever is available in Asuswrt for management. No much point doing this setup.

Use the Netgate with switch and access point or the Asus as All-In-One router. One of the two. You can use the Asus temporary for AP and search around how to do VLANs on it, it's possible. You need custom firmware with VLANs in GUI (DD-WRT or FrestTomato) or Asuswrt-Merlin with custom script. Much easier and perhaps better in terms of upgrade - SMB AP to Netgate. Lower priced Zyxel Nebula, TP-Link Omada, Cisco CBW, etc. are good options.

 

[3eezie]

Thanks for all the help . I'm thinking i should not have bought the Netgate now. I have an only HP 800 G3 Mini with 8gb of ram i was thinking of using as a firewall with pfsence. I currently use a Firewall Red for security but i wanted more capabilities so i got the netgate.

 

[Tech9]

HP 800 G3 Mini with 8gb of ram

This mini-PC (x86) has much more processing power than SG-1100 (ARM), but single NIC only. I was running similar PC with VLAN separated WAN and LAN to smart switch for quite some time, it worked great. Works also with ASIX based USB-to-Ethernet adapters, but of course Ethernet is better.

 

[Tech9]

It was years ago, had to search for similar setups, see this for ideas:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/dx7hgv/converting_single_nic_minipc_into_pfsense

and this:

pfSense router-on-a-stick VLAN configuration with a Netgear GS108E

nguvu.org

There are more sources online in case you are interested in such thing.

 

[3eezie]

Thats an interesting setup, Ill look into this.

This nice thing about this PC is it has a swap-able IO card called HP Flex IO. Most are for different video connections but there is a one 2.5gb NIC. The PC uses 65w at max load, im running windows 11 on a different one and under general use its 18-25w of power usage.

 

[Tech9]

If you can use this connector for additional NIC - best option. Power efficiency is good indeed, I have a few HP Elitedesk Mini's in use, they work under 20W with whatever they are doing. One is my DIY NAS, another runs my local home automation, another is used as a PC... All Intel i5s T-series CPUs, all run Windows, good enough. Used on eBay and in good condition come around $100 and I even recommended a few to people searching for more expensive RPi kits. This Mini-PC is much more capable than RPi and can run any OS. The same price or cheaper, just a bit larger size.