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    Unable to access Transparent Bridge (WAN/LAN) from LAN

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • S
      swears123 @viragomann
      last edited by swears123

      @viragomann No access to pfsense from behind udm (10.50.10.xxx) network with or without default gateway.

      I'm using the IP address 192.168.100.2 for the pfsense bridge interface.

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      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        What's the UDM WAN IP?

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        • S
          swears123 @stephenw10
          last edited by swears123

          @stephenw10 That would be my external ISP IP address (which I don't want to show on here ;) )

          I tried setting that as the Gateway in PFSense but I got an error.

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          • V
            viragomann @swears123
            last edited by

            @swears123 said in Unable to access Transparent Bridge (WAN/LAN) from LAN:

            That would be my external ISP IP address (which I don't want to show on here ;) )

            No need to post it here, but this is something what should have been mentioned before.
            So the UDM does PPPoE or something alike?

            It needs to have an IP the modems LAN / pfSense network to get access, maybe es an alias and it need to do masquerading to this IP on traffic which is destined to pfSense.

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            • S
              swears123 @viragomann
              last edited by

              @viragomann Fair enough.

              WAN on the Unifi set to DHCP and it pulls the external IP (not the modem, I assume by design). I suppose I can try to set a static IP on the Unifi WAN to the modem's IP. Does that make sense?

              I don't know anything about masquerading/Alias'.

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              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                Yes, if the UDM has a PPPoE WAN then the default gateway on pfSense should be an IP on the UDM in the modem subnet. Or no gateway.

                Why are you adding pfSense here though? It doesn't appear to be doing anything useful.

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                • V
                  viragomann @swears123
                  last edited by

                  @swears123
                  You need an additional IP on WAN aside the DHCP.This is called IP alias in pfSense.

                  An upstream router commonly have masquerading enabled. That means, it translates source IP in upstream packets into its WAN IP.
                  So since the UDM has a public IP, I expect it does this as well. However, for accessing pfSense you need to translate it to the second WAN IP in 192.168.100.0/24.
                  If this is not possible you can add a static route for the 10.50.10.0/24 to pfSense and point it the the UDM and hope that it works.

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                  • S
                    swears123
                    last edited by swears123

                    @stephenw10 Thanks.

                    I'm looking to offload the firewall/security to the pfsense as the Unifi Dream Router has a very weak CPU and can't seem to handle high throughput with IDS/IPS enabled.

                    The Unifi uses DHCP on the WAN side to pull the IP (but only shows the external IP, not cable modem IP)

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                    • S
                      swears123 @viragomann
                      last edited by

                      @viragomann I added a static route in pfsense to point to 10.50.10.0/24. Is this what you recommended?

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                      • V
                        viragomann @swears123
                        last edited by

                        @swears123
                        You need to add the UDM IP (this one in 192.168.100.0/24) as gateway first, then add the route for the 10.50.10.0/24 network and point to the UDM gateway.

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                        • DefenderLLCD
                          DefenderLLC
                          last edited by DefenderLLC

                          So I am having a very similar issue trying to change my 6100 MAX to become a transparent firewall between my AT&T Fiber Gateway and my UDM-SE. This forum post is very close to what I’m trying to do, but it doesn’t seem to work for me nor did the OP respond if he/she ever got it working. I’ve also watched Tom Lawrence’s YouTube videos on this, but in his example he’s not including his WAN interface - only two LAN interfaces.

                          Note that I have been using my 6100 MAX in front of my UDM-SE in a dual-NAT scenario primarily for much better control over DNS filtering (pfBlocker) and Snort (IPS: WAN, IDS: LAN). This has worked flawlessly for almost a year with no issues (although doing port forwards can be kind of tricky), and no problems up to this point. For the sake of masking my real public IPs, please just assume that 99.99.99.99/29 is my public IP block (AT&T actually provides a /32 and a /29 for a total of 6 usable public IPs).

                          —————————————————————————

                          Current Deployment and Configuration

                          [Internet] ----- [AT&T Gateway] ----- [pfSense] ----- [UDM-SE]

                          AT&T Gateway (99.99.99.99/29) WAN "IP passover" mode to pfSense (essentially just a modem and gateway)
                          AT&T Gateway (192.168.0.1/24) - LAN
                          pfSense (99.99.99.99/29) - WAN (via DHCP for primary /32 WAN IP plus additional /29 block configured as virtual IPs)
                          pfSense (10.0.0.1/24) - LAN
                          UDM-SE (10.0.0.2) - WAN IP via DHCP from pfSense
                          UDM-SE (10.0.1.1) - MGMT IP

                          Again, no problems whatsoever up to this point. I can get to all 3 management interfaces (AT&T/pfSense/UDM-SE) from my UniFi LAN without issue.

                          —————————————————————————

                          What I want to do is change my 6100 MAX to become a transparent firewall instead so I can get rid of dual-NAT scenario and manage my 6 public IPs on the UDM-SE instead.

                          Within pfSense, I have tried disabling NAT, creating a new bridge with both LAN/WAN (this also includes changing both System Tunables to member=0 and bridge=1 and setting the LAN and WAN interfaces to no IP address) and assigned it a management IP on the AT&T Gateway LAN. No dice getting to pfSense or AT&T gateway's web interfaces. No Internet connectivity at all. If I set both System Tunables to 0, everything works (minus any filtering of course). Once I turn the bridge tunable back to 1, I keep seeing default denies in the firewall log. I don't understand why because I temporarily have all interfaces firewall rules wide open for IPv4.
                          

                          Proposed Deployment and Configuration:

                          [Internet] ----- [AT&T Gateway] ----- [pfSense] ----- [UDM-SE]

                          AT&T Gateway (99.99.99.99/29) WAN "IP passover" mode to UDM-SE (essentially just a modem and gateway)
                          AT&T Gateway (192.168.0.1/24) - LAN
                          pfSense with LAN/WAN configured as a bridge interface
                          UDM-SE WAN: (static /32 plus 99.99.99.99/29 as additional IPs)
                          UDM-SE LAN (10.0.1.1) - MGMT IP

                          I have scoured through so many forum posts and other websites for about 2 days trying to get this to work, but I keep having to revert back to my current setup (thank goodness for pfSense Plus boot environments). I should not have to configure any static routes since a transparent firewall should work without changing anything on the AT&T Gateway or UDM-SE. The proposed scenario obviously works perfectly fine without the pfSense in the mix. So what is the proper way to do this? No matter what I try, I can’t seem to get this to work. Thanks.

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