Whomever said “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” (me) is gonna be really mad at me.
The time has finally come to start seriously messing with my network. It is – of course – happening in phases, with the first phase fixin’ to kick off tomorrow (Saturday).
Saturday is testing day. “What will you be testing?”, you might be asking. Well, I’m going to be testing how my ISP behaves when I pull their provided edge equipment and replace it with mine, specifically that FreeBSD box that I bought on eBay nearly two years ago. I’ve loaded it up with the most recent version of pfSense CE, made sure it is appropriately configured to keep the baddies™ out, and am ready to do the cable swap that will remove the Nest Wifi Pro and place the PfSense box in-line.
Per the plan, there will be one system connected to the other side of the pfSense box – we will call that our PuppyLinux box. It’s basically Linux on a stick, which will be running completely in RAM, and I’ll be using that system to hit the pfSense box – and the web – and determine what everything does. I am hoping that it will “just work”™, which means that I won’t have to contact my ISP to make any tweaks on their side when I make tweaks on mine. This is the desired and ideal result. If, on the other hand, things don’t work that easily, I will then know that ISP involvement for anything fancy™ will be required. Once all those determinations are made, I will swap everything back to the way it was before and move on with my day.
“So Mike, if you are going to end the day configured the way you began it, what’s the point?” Very good question! The point is I will know what I will need to do when I obtain my yet-to-be-obtained Ubiquiti gear! I want as few surprises during that phase (phase 2) of the project, so knowing what I’m getting into in regards to ISP involvement (or lack thereof) is one more box I can check off before I get too deep into my complete network makeover.
Expect a report on results soon!