Ethernet network and firewall

[sekriT]

I have two phantoms and a dialog connected via ethernet.  Wifi on these receive IP addresses on 192.168.1.x network. I had to connect them via ethernet since Wifi was annoyingly unreliable using crowded 2.4 Ghz even though 5 Ghz bandwidth was free (see my old posts about this).  Anyways, phantoms have been working fine since I connected them via ethernet and never wondered about the ethernet addresses since it just worked.  But I installed a pfSense firewall recently as a better replacement for a residential wireless router/firewall. I was digging the firewall logs and noticed that 3 local devices were being blocked. These were on 10.201.42.1 (dialog), 10.201.42.35 and 10.201.42.44 (phantoms) using port 24242 sending packets each other every 3-5 seconds. I unblocked them so that they can freely talk to each other.  Surprising to me that they worked even though firewall was blocking this traffic. But music now plays immediately instead of 1-2 seconds of delay after pressing the play button. It is absurd that while Wifi network uses the same subnet as the other devices on the home network, ethernet was fixed at 10.201.42.x subnet. Maybe dialog acts as a router for phantoms using ethernet hence different network addresses are used. On the other hand receives IP address from home router when using Wifi? Strange.

So, if you have a setup similar to mine, it pays to check the firewall logs.