pfsense pfSense multiple subnets

[Khoomn]

So I'm setting up a new home network soon. I have my pfSense router, 1 16 port gigabit unmanaged switch and a 5 port unmanaged switch (will not need all ports, its just what I have), and 3 Engenius EAP1300 WAPs.

 

I want to setup my network so that there are 2 networks. 1 for all home devices and 1 for IoT/guest but the IoT/guest will be WiFi only on a seperate SSID. The WAPs I have, have an option for it to be a guest network and setup its own DHCP server for the guest network but I want to have the pfSense router controlling everything and not the WAPs. I want the DHCP server and firewall rules going through the pfSense router.

 

I was wondering how I could create a second subnet for the IoT/guest network and how to manage it all through the router. I would usually just do vlans but these are unmanaged switches. Am I asking too much and should I just go with the WAPs to do all the work?

[Bdavis]

This is done using vlans. The non managed switches should be able to pass everything through to your APs then you assign one vlan to your guest network ssid and one to your regular ssid.

[Bdavis]

Sometimes the wap guest network settings isolate all devices. This sometimes doesn't work for IOT devices. But may be fine for your application.

 

You could get some network segmentation by using a pfsense box with multiple lan interfaces and hooking one unmanaged switch to each interface. This doesn't work well with access points though as you usually want them to broadcast more than one network.

 

A managed switch isn't all that expensive.