Want to hear something boring? I built myself a router last year using a Zotac ZBOX CI323 nano and the opnsense firewall distribution. It works fairly well. The primary problem I have with it now is that ever since the 17.x updates (I started with 16.x), the CI323 nano will shut down randomly. When this happens I, predictably, lose internet service and need to restart the CI323. Now I haven't troubleshot this issue yet but this post has absolutely nothing to do with that.
This post is documenting what I needed to do to get the TP-LINK Archer C9 to work as a wireless access point behind the CI323 nano.
I found the solution on another site which I'm documenting here for (my) ease of use/reference.
So to get my Archer C9 to play nicely behind the CI323 nano's opnsense firewall, I:
- Disabled DHCP in Archer C9.
- Then, and this is the important bit that I was missing, I plugged the C9 into my opnsense router but did not use the TP-LINK's WAN port.