Since I already have a router in place, I needed a way to test pfSense's routing abilities without disturbing existing DHCP assignments or future DHCP client requests.

I'm fairly new at this - so anyone reading - please let me know if there's a better/easier way to do this. I'll describe my current setup and methodology below.

My Linksys router/AP allows admin to set a custom local IP address for management. By default, you get the standard 192.168.1.1/24 but it does allow up to a /16 CIDR subnet mask. Users, DHCP or manually assigned, are restricted to the 192.168 range, plus whatever the subnet mask allows.

The most straightforward way I can think of to isolate my pfSense machine but still have internet seems to be putting it both its WAN and LANs on their own subnets. I've enabled DHCP on the (so far) single LAN port. This avoids messy DHCP IP range assignment and will eventually give me a clean way to test all the interfaces on the card.

I'm then able to connect to the router/AP's subnet (and admin UI). If I connect to LAN via ethernet ( to usb adapter) that lets me access both the router/AP's admin UI and the pfSense admin UI.

All of the above is working well.

Next is to look into firewall stuff - I'm thinking that's blocking pfSense admin UI from wifi. It would be nice to administer both via wifi.