Got a spare ADSL router with a WIFI interface. Not using its ADSL functionality at all. Smartphones can connect to it through WIFI, and see its web-based configurator, and also they can see a web server running on a desktop computer that is connected to the router through an ethernet port.

The desktop is runnning pfsense gateway and can see the internet through another ethernet port. A laptop physically connected to this gateway can see the internet. But the smartphone cannot, it can only see the pfsense web configurator.

I think the router's default gateway is always the ADSL gateway (no setting found for it) and this is the problem. Whereas the laptop's default gateway is obtained by DHCP.

Is this therefore hopeless, the smartphone will never get internet access this way? The idea was to eventually create a captive portal with pfsense. Tried it, it only works with the laptop. EDIT: Btw the smartphone has NO settings for a proxy.

Looks like a lighttpd web server listening on port 8081 instead of 8080 (because 8080 is already used by pfsense's lighttpd instance for its web-based configurator), and a script like cgiproxy is the only way smartphones can access the internet through this wifi router.

Any easier solutions? Not even sure if lighttpd can do cgi scripts, or a captive portal.