Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Bridge external to internal vlan

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    11 Posts 3 Posters 1.1k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • R
      rvdk92
      last edited by rcoleman-netgate

      Hi,

      I'am new here and i'm looking for a new firewall.

      My question is:

      Can you with pfsense splice a layer3 subnet and bridge them to a VLAN?

      We use now SonicWall and we can for example splice a WAN /27 in /32 adressess and send them with DHCP to a internal VLAN off a customer with Traffic Shaping. this works fantastic.

      Only we can't this also with our routed subnet on the same WAN. so i need a new Sonicwall for each subnet.

      I am wondering if i can do the same with pfsense.

      R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • R
        rcoleman-netgate Netgate @rvdk92
        last edited by

        @rvdk92 I took your attachment and added it to your post.

        If you have further trouble posting things please let us know :-)
        You need a rep of 5 to skip past the spam filters.

        Ryan
        Repeat, after me: MESH IS THE DEVIL! MESH IS THE DEVIL!
        Requesting firmware for your Netgate device? https://go.netgate.com
        Switching: Mikrotik, Netgear, Extreme
        Wireless: Aruba, Ubiquiti

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • stephenw10S
          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
          last edited by

          You may have to define 'splice' there.

          You can bridge the WAN with another interface in order to use public IPs in the WAN subnet on other hosts. However it's generally better to avoid bridging if you can and use routed subnets instead.

          Steve

          R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • R
            rvdk92 @stephenw10
            last edited by

            @stephenw10 Hi thanks for you quick reply.

            What i mean whit split the subnet here a example:

            from ISP i get on VLAN10 subnet: 1.1.1.96/27
            I wil use 1.1.1.97, 98 and 99 for my switches with VRRP and use 1.1.1.100/27 for WAN on the firewall.

            Than i like to give customer A IP 1.1.1.101 on VLAN 3001 and customer B IP 1.1.1.102 on VLAN 3001 and till to last IP.

            The reason why i choose for this solution (by SonicWall.) i can give my customer a WAN IP with DHCP on there own VLAN, do traffic shaping and I need fewer ip addresses if I route a subnet everywhere from my switch.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by

              Ok, if I've understood correctly you can't do that in pfSense. At least not yet.

              Your customers see your firewall as their gateway? Or the ISP directly?

              Is it your DHCP server handing out those IPs to the customers?

              Steve

              R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • R
                rvdk92 @stephenw10
                last edited by

                @stephenw10

                Hi,
                Yes the DHCP server is also the firewall (SonicWall.)
                I have configured now that the firewall of customer use the gateway of our routers. so the VRRP .96

                The only thing that the Sonicwall is doing, split the L3 subnet, send with DHCP a single WAN ip on a VLAN to customer with bandwith limit.

                This works like a charm and looking for a same solution on another device.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • stephenw10S
                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                  last edited by

                  Hmm, I wouldn't expect to be able to replicate that exactly in pfSense. You would need bridge WAN with all the VLANs and then filter appropriately. But if clients are using the pfSense IP as their gateway you would see asymmetric routing issues when the ISP can see the clients directly. You can work around it in various ways
                  You would also need to run the dhcp server on WAN and add appropriate filtering there. And I'm not sure it's possible to filter that exactly.
                  On top of that bridging to VLANs can introduce additional issues.

                  If you have a test environment you could try it and see how much of that can be done. It might be enough.

                  Steve

                  R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • R
                    rvdk92 @stephenw10
                    last edited by

                    @stephenw10

                    Thank you for your answer.

                    To be clear, I've uploaded a picture of the situation now.

                    Do you see where I want to go?Network setup Sonicwall.png

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • stephenw10S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by stephenw10

                      Ok you have VLAN Customers B and C shown as 10.1.102 and 10.1.103 at the Sonicwall there. Is that just a typo?

                      But all the devices are using the upstream router as the gateway there which removes the asymmetric routing issue. But is also contradicts what you wrote earlier, or at least as I read it.

                      R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • R
                        rvdk92 @stephenw10
                        last edited by

                        @stephenw10

                        Sorry yes is typo! to quick!

                        But is this also possible with pfsense.. so if i can replace the SonicWall for a pfSense firewall?

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • stephenw10S
                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                          last edited by

                          Possibly. 😉

                          It's not something I would normally advise doing. The traffic shaping could be problematic. The filtering to keep each customer separate will be...interesting.

                          But it might work I can only really suggest you try it if you can test it in something.
                          I will say that trying to run that virtualized will almost certainly fail without a bunch of additional tweaks. I would test on real hardware if you can.

                          Steve

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • First post
                            Last post
                          Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.