Although the above solution did provide the ablity to show the NICs as VLAN capable in pfSense, it still presented an issue with the number of VLANs that I could configure.  In order to send multiple VLANs to the ESX vSwitch I would have to create a port group for each VLAN and add these to the pfSense VM.  ESX does not allow more than 5 PCI devices to be mapped to a VM so I could not assign more than 3 VLANs to any one VM. (the SCSI controller, 1 WAN, then 3 VLANs for the VMs) ESX2 offered a solution involving editing some files manually to allow the passing of VLAN tags to the gueast called VGT mode.  In ESX3 they made this much easier by simply specifying the VLAN tag as 4095. On the ESX side…   - Using the VI Client, select the server and go to Configuration --> Networking   - Click Add Networking to create a switch mapped to the NIC you are going to use as the LAN NIC for pfSense (In my case I used one of the Intel NICs)   - Go to the properties of the vSwitch and set the VLAN tag for the port group to 4095.  You will notice that the VLAN ID will say "All" when you apply the change.   - Make sure the this port group is assigned to the pfSense VM and edit the VMX file to use the e1000 device (see above postings) From here you should be all set to add all of the VLANs you need from the pfSense interface.  You will, of course, need to configure the port you are using on your physical switch that goes to the pfSense LAN NIC (Dell 5012 in my case) as a tagged port. Two excellent ESX3 VLAN'ing documents...   - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_vlan_wp.pdf   - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9689-b.pdf Hope all of this helps someone else... Rick

You will have to simulate a nic up and down event by right clicking on the nic in the vmware console and turn it off and back on.  Otherwise you'll need to type in the interface names and not do the auto assign feature.

Why do you have your VM win2k box on the WAN side.  The WAN side should only be dedicated to your cable modem or adls modem.  All other systems should be on the LAN side. Details pfsense VM picks up appropriate information on WAN via DHCP, and webgui interface status window shows that it is getting a proper IP, within the right subnet, and the right gateway / dns IPs The above sounds good.  My pfsense does this as well. another VM, running Windows 2000, is set to the same Default Bridged config as the pfsense WAN interface, and picks up the correct info across the board as well; further, it can browse the web just fine Why do you have this on the WAN, the only thing on the WAN side should be pfsense especially if you're connecting a cable modem or dsl modem.  Are you setting up some sort of DMZ area?  Do you have another router infront of pfsense? only difference in IP configuration between Win2K VM and pfsense VM is a different host IP from DHCP… they are getting all other settings from DHCP and they are identical on both (gw, dhcp, dns, etc) setting pfsense's WAN interface to static IP in the appropriate range instead of DHCP, and manually entering appropriate IP info for gw and dns, does not resolve the issue Win2K VM can ping the DHCP provider, and can ping the physical host box as well; as mentioned, it can browse the web fine cannot ping the pfsense WAN IP from any machine on the subnet pfsense cannot ping any other machine on the WAN's subnet whether by IP or by DNS name, nor can it ping the IP from which it says it is receiving its DHCP info(?!?) issue does not lie with host machine IP stack or network config, and disabling all but for VMware Bridging protocol on the host machine's adapter does not resolve the issue Host machine is Win XP Pro SP2, with all patches installed, and firewall has been enabled/disabled without changing anything whatsoever. Here is my setup, kind of like yours but I don't use Win2k VM.. I have a Host Machine 2 NIC's 1 WAN ---> Cable Modem only 1 LAN ----> GigE Switch ----> Internal Network Client Machines I have 2 VM's 1 VM pfsense, configured with 2 Virtual NIC's, that Map to Physical WAN, and Physical LAN. 1 VM Debian configured with 1 Virtual NIC Mapped to Physical LAN I never use host-only or NAT (Ok I use NAT if im going to patch a new build.) LAN is like vmnet2 which I point to my Physical Broadcomm GigE Nic in windows WAN is bridged vmnet0 which points to my Physical Broadcomm Ethernet Nic in windows. LAN 192.168.1.x WAN is received from cable modem. Now on my Windows HOST system, I statically IP my Ethernet NIC to 1.1.1.1 so it doesn't DHCP to the cable modem. I IPed on my HOST on the GigE interface 192.168.1.10, and from there I can ping 192.168.1.1 my pfsense VM.  Sweet. My Debian box is mapped to the LAN interface which is the GigE NIC on the host system.  I can ping 192.168.1.255 -b and I see everything, or nmap -n -T5 -sP 192.168.1.0/24. I'm not sure if this helps but I hate seeing a message out there with no response, especially when I'm kind of doing the same thing I guess.

You have 2 NICs in the server, correct? The pfSense virtual machine needs to have 2 network adapters. One bridged to the NIC connected to the ISP and the other bridged to the NIC going to your LAN.

It works this way correctly! Tnx! :)

@no1youknowz: Has more support than VMWare Server 1.3! Maybe but pfSense and other BSD platforms run on VMware correctly.  ;) Never heard of VirtualBox though and will have to give it a look at.

I have issues setting up a test and/or dev environment under parallels.  I get kernel panics once I install it to the hard drive partway through updating to the latest CVS (during the auto-update fresh install).  Anyone else have better luck or a guide? I'm on Parallels 3.0 build 4560. Thanks, ID

Checkbox sounds good, that was nearly enough to put me off using it, might just be my setup but its (or was :) ) unreasonably loud lol!

hello, thank you for the answer. Actually i only what the shutdown work properly (in case of my UPS init an emergency shutdown on the host) so i don't need the X part. i'll try the dev edition anyway. thanks ;)

@sullrich: Pootle, please email coreteam@pfsense.com with a username / password for our new wiki. Also, the old docs site is at http://olddoc.pfsense.org/index.php/Main_Page so we can start transferring items over. Oh! just found this - sorry missed the email, but back in business now. Thanks

If you want to do strictly routing, add an allow all rule on the WAN interface, use it for whatever network has your default gateway, disable NAT, and you have a router. WAN needs to be the interface that has your default gateway.

VMWare will perform better on your hardware.  I don't believe that 2.8ghz CPU has the Intel VT-x hardware and since FreeBSD 6.2 won't run as a Xen domU (or even dom0) pfSense will perform at uhh… 0% on it ;) --Bill

;D its ok i've solved it… three issues. 1. over tired (been network bashing for 14 hrs straight). 2. impaitent. 3. no mac address spoofing. basically i'd added the mac spoofing originally and not waited for the reload to take effect, not tested a ping and decided it didnt work because the ip still said none...I then messed around with all my vm network settings until i went cross eyed. I went through everything again SLOWLY and its working... feel a bit of a chump now lol

Sorry, silly me, you said win2003.  It will be easier not to use NAT (which will just giove you a whole new layer of problems. If yo uset up a new VMWare network, you can bridge it to the wireless NIC in the VMWare Host Virtual Network Mapping screen.  Your VM should then pick up an address through DHCP if you want it to, or configure by hand if it won't. You need windoze to be able to pick up and use the wireless card first of course.  Can you run the host machine over WiFi?

Looks like you have the same subnet at WAN and at LAN. This is a conflict. You need unique subnets.

@Pootle: BaNZ, have you spread the channels that your wireless APs use?  Also are you getting any interference from other wireless nearby?  You should also make sure that that the APs are as far apart as you can manage.  Best thing would be to try with just one on then see what happens as you add the others. Yes, I've checked my neighbour channel and changed to a different one. I've changed my channel to 3 and I tried 4 / 5. I found out it's not interference. Its something to do with my cheap AP and pfsense. If I connect my AP to pfsense all the clients on the AP gets around 50-70k/s and if I turn on a p2p application I get 20-40k/s. This is really strange because if I plug a router directly to pfsense it is perfectly fine and I get my max speed. So I took my AP and plug it in directly to WAN instead of going through AP, this works fine too I get my max speed. This proves that my AP is working. When I check my AP in the dhcp page on pfsense it shows its offline. But after pinging the AP from pfsense it shows online and brings the speed up to around 100k/s. But if I reset the AP it will again show its offline and the speed drops down again. I tried to plug another wifi router and I get my max speed fine. So it is definitely something wrong with the AP with pfsense. I tried fiddling around the threshold in my AP and it improves it slightly but not much. I probably gonna have to get a new wifi router. Or maybe use pfsense->router->ap since I have a spare router lying somewhere and I can save some money. update: bought new wifi router and plugged it in. It is now fine. Had a problem earlier when I'm transferring large files, basically it kills all other clients connection when there is a huge amount of traffic. I changed the channel and it is fine.

Thanks!  Great Wiki.