ESX always uses bridge modus(NAT is a Vmware Server/Workstation feature), and works just fine with pfSense(why wouldn't it ?).

Edit:
ESX: In ESX you normally connect a physical interface to a virtual switch. Then you can connect your VM's to your virtual switch.
So if you want pfSense to function as a router/firewall, you should at least create 2 virtual switches, for example WAN and LAN.

I had basicly same problem installing in the vmware server I found that my network links in the virtual machine even though showing bridged from what I understand now it was the main bridged adapeter rather then vmnet2/vmnet3 I recomend you go back to http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Installing_pfSense_in_vmware_under_windows and look at Summery of Virtual Machine settings picture there then go back and make sure you have actually selected the vmnet2 in your actual virtual machine.  After I linked the adapter correctly there my pppoe connection worked.

@jgalgay:

I concur.   I want to run PFSense within an OpenVZ containter.

Are  the issues with containerizing FreeBSD … or with PFSense providing the security / services from within an OpenVZ container ?

JJG

From the OpenVZ Wikipedia article:
"OpenVZ is limited in that it requires both the host and guest OS to be Linux"

Seems that you have a technology issue.

–Bill

Ahh ok. So I will have to reboot to try this solution.
(to check the bios)

I am running OpenSuse 11.0 on the box in question. 2.6.25 kernel. an intel x86_64 .

I just checked the "my computer" window in KDE, it said that the cpu speed was changing. So this could be the problem.

It will be a while for me to try this as the server is in production and I do not want to take it down for 20-30+ min with out
notice.

I just happened to run across this today during my beta testing of ESX 4.  It's going to be really sweet when I get CPUs that can actually do it.  The stuff in ESX 4 is unreal.  I cannot wait till it goes RTM.

Thanks for the reply, I have already set to promiscous mode in ESX, otherwise it would not work at all. The current setup does work in general except the weird arp problem and yes I am using it as a filtering bridge.

Thank you. Was hoping there was a magic answer.

What I meant by one of these cards is…

Wired --> LAN
Wired --> WAN
Wireless --> WAN2
Wireless --> LAN2 (broadcast) will setup in host. thanks again.

Because virtualisation provides no security, and indeed weakens security (as it can only introduce vulnerabilities).

Also, Xen doesn't yet support FreeBSD as a dom0, making the point rather moot ;)

I managed to fix it. On the DSL modem itself there was on option where you can actually set the DHCP lease time. It was set by default to every 10 minutes. I set it to 365 days and seems to have fixed the problem. I'm not sure why it was not a problem before with our old pfsense box. But I guess the problem for the time being is resolved.

Would just like to add one thing here.

This method was great because I am able to use the compatibility of linux's wireless cards that freebsd/pfsense does not. For Example my wireless N Draft cards.

@cmb:

I was seeing this on 1.2.1 also, but thought it was something weird going on with my system as it worked on other systems and nobody else has reported any issues after a few thousand downloads.

The 1.2.2 VM is available now and it doesn't do that for me at least.

That solved it!!  I spend close to a week trying to understand what was going on, it worked first try with 1.2.2

Thanks

I had the same problem and solved it by switching to Intel Pro/1000 T-Server network adapters.

Apparently it's a bug in FreeBSD, see http://eligere.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/virtualbox-156-freebsd-70-and-pcnet-fast-iii-problem/

Unfortunately, I figured it out after messing around for quite some time.
Perhaps a notice should be added to the download page, since it's pretty common to try it under a VM.

Edit: I'm using VirtualBox 2.0.6

If you want to keep the firewall rule functionality so you can filter packets, you can just disable NAT by going to NAT, Outbound, change it to manual and delete the rule. This will allow it to function strictly as a router with the ability to filter packets.

@Cry:

If the adapter is supported by FreeBSD then yes it's possible.  However, if you connect to a USB 1 port you'll be limited at a maximum of 12 Mb/s.  VMWare probably has some overhead too, so whatever theoretical bandwidth you're expecting, you'll probably get less.

Just trying to see whether it works. What do u mean by "supported by FreeBSD then yes it's possible." I want this USB doggle to act like my wireless AP. Or can i hook up my trusty wrt54g to do the job? which is better?