I have an OpenBSD router connected to a cable modem.. from the OpenBSD router I have 3 nics,.. 1) cable modem 2) wired network(connected to switch) and 3) wireless network.

Unfortunately I'm not sure how to get this to work. What I have currently is nic 2) and 3) segregated into separate subnets. I need to get windows file sharing working and so far haven't been able to unless I connect a laptop via ethernet to the switch on nic 2).

What I've been reading and wondering is.. do I need to somehow setup a bridge from 2) -> 3)? and if so.. do I set an ip on the bridge or on the interfaces creating the bridge?

I'm not sure the technical name for what I'm trying to do so that's whats confusing me. Do I bridge? If so, where do IP's get placed? I'd like to turn the wireless and wired networks into a single subnet to make routing and file sharing easier,.. for windows.


If this came out confusingly. I apologize. I tried to let my head clear after my weekend of researching and trials before I attempted to post for help. If anyone needs me to attempt to clear something up, let me know. Until then I'll be bashing my head on my keyboard pounding down energy drinks.

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq6.html
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/index.html

Yeah that's where I spent most of my time. I also went out and bought, "The Book of PF: A No-Nonsense Guide to The OpenBSD Firewall". I've read through it all and come up with a ruleset that works well for my setup. I'm just not certain whether or not bridging is what I need for my setup. That's I guess what my question is.. do I want to bridge the two interfaces? I've read the information over and over and perhaps I'm just dense I suppose but I'm still not sure whether or not that's what I need to do.

Is it?

You don't need to bridge the two internal interfaces just to be able to mount a share or use a printer, but the machines on the wireless network probably won't see machines on the wired network in "Network Neighborhood". You would need to manually enter the IP of the machine you want to connect to--at least, that is my suspicion. I don't use CIFS/SMB on my network any more.

That question isn't really OpenBSD-specific any way, it's much more related to Samba. All you need to know is what ports have to be open in which direction and you can easily translate them into PF rules.

Its not a SAMBA issue.
If your network has no domain controller you need to allow broadcast traffic to go across all interfaces. So your pf.conf needs to include port 139 for netbios.