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    Pfsense and Videoconference is not a perfect match!?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • M
      madah999
      last edited by

      Thanks for all responses.
      The setup is straight forward. I have a Managed Netgear switch in which port 8 is on Untagged VL666 is connected to the ISP via fiber converter.
      PFsense is connected to port 1 via Dot1Q in the same Netgear switch. PF is configured with two VLANs, VL1 and VL666 with a single NIC.

      Pfsense1.png

      Pfsense2.png

      When I do Teams meetings it feels that traffic does not flow as freely as when connected via the Cisco ASA.

      I have DNSBL+ Snort running + DHCP. I have 15 rules on the LAN interface

      johnpozJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • johnpozJ
        johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @madah999
        last edited by

        @madah999 said in Pfsense and Videoconference is not a perfect match!?:

        Snort running

        And if you turn that off?

        An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
        If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
        Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
        SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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        • C
          coxhaus
          last edited by coxhaus

          Are you using router on a stick with untagged traffic? How do you know how to process the untagged traffic. Maybe I am looking at this wrong. You said 2 VLANs. I guess VL666 and VL1 on 1 interface. On your gateway WAN is default which is VL666. I guess you are using a trunk with 2 vlans. It took me a while to think about it.
          Router on a stick is weird with a firewall. Why don't you use 2 interfaces defined with vlans. I guess the WAN since it is untagged it does not need to be defined as a vlan. LAN side needs a to be a vlan to be able to talk with DNS and the workstation.
          PS
          I have never used Netgear only Cisco.

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          • johnpozJ
            johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @coxhaus
            last edited by

            @coxhaus said in Pfsense and Videoconference is not a perfect match!?:

            Maybe I am looking at this wrong

            Maybe not - might be a good catch - lists tagged with 802.1q but then his drawing shows untagged for vl666 and untagged fro vlan1? into pfsense - if that is one physical interface one of those has to be tagged..

            so a bit confused as well with the L3 diagram

            An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
            If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
            Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
            SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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            • C
              coxhaus
              last edited by coxhaus

              I would not want a Netgear switch software standing between my workstation and my DNS server. It seems very unsafe to me. I would rather be behind the firewall. But everybody gets to choose.
              You are only logically behind the firewall not physically behind a firewall. There is a big difference in my mind.
              His terminology may be Netgear.

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              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                I would prefer to use two tagged VLANs on the trunk rather than tagged (666) and untagged just because it's much easier to make mistakes with tagged and untagged. I'm assuming here that VLAN1 only exists inside the switch. You shouldn't ever use VLAN1 on a trunk directly if you can possibly avoid it.

                I wouldn't have any real concerns with a setup like this. It should work fine.

                However if there were some layer 2 issue here it would affect far more than just streaming video.

                Steve

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                • johnpozJ
                  johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @stephenw10
                  last edited by johnpoz

                  @stephenw10 said in Pfsense and Videoconference is not a perfect match!?:

                  ather than tagged (666) and untagged just because

                  But his L3 drawing shows 666 and 1 both untagged..

                  untagged.jpg

                  Which wouldn't be good setup that is for sure. If there is only 1 physical interface on pfsense.

                  What I assumed from his L2 drawing is 666 was tagged into pfsense, and 1 was untagged.. He labeled it 802.1q so assume that vlan 1 is the the default native and would be untagged across a trunk, But then on his L3 he shows both untagged.

                  edit: but yeah if he was running both untagged into pfsense you would assume he would be seeing much more than just issues with video calls. Not even sure how you could really set that up in pfsense? On the switch sure you could send both untagged, but then there would be no wan connectivity at all since how would pfsense see the wan if was looking for tag 666 and it was untagged?

                  An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                  If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                  Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                  SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    Yeah I assumed the tagging was on the L3 diagram just for clarity (though I'm not sure it helps!) since the switch isn't marked on there.

                    What is not clear is whether the internal subnet is tagged between the switch and pfSense as VLAN1 or untagged. Either could work but I hate seeing VLAN1 tagged anywhere except inside a switch.

                    https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/vlan/security.html#using-the-default-vlan-1

                    I also don't like seeing tagged and untagged traffic on the same link though if I can avoid it. I'd rather see two tagged VLANs (other than 1!) on the trunk to pfSense.

                    Steve

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                    • C
                      coxhaus
                      last edited by

                      Yes, untagged traffic ends up on the default vlan which can be any vlan.

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                      • M
                        madah999
                        last edited by

                        Hi

                        I have been traveling so I have not been able to respond.

                        I have made some changes and to my Pfsense which has fix many issues. Yes this is a simple setup with a single NIC computer running Pfsense.
                        Yes, It is a router on stick which I find is good for a small home office. You need to trust VLAN technology to be able to use router on stick designs.
                        I trust vlans and vlans is very practical in many ways. I will later on change from VL1 to something else as it is not recommended for security reasons
                        to use VL1. Pfsense, Netgear and Cisco talk vlan via Dot1q protocol, Cisco used to also do vlans via their proprietary protocol ISL but they have skipped that one
                        many years ago.

                        I have been using my own DNS for many years because of security and the low latency in DNS resolution. I like to keep my data in my log own files
                        rather having them at Google Datacenters :)

                        So I was running version 2.6 when I had "my" issues. I noticed in systems log that when I was loading the NIC with "more" traffic, NIC often
                        "decided" to restart which of course caused issues. I use a builtin Realtek Gigabit card in my Pfsense server and have found out that more people
                        than I have had issues with Realtek.

                        I have now upgraded the Pfsense to version 2.7, I have not started services like Snort, DNSBL for now.
                        I only run Ntopng 5.7.2 and the setup seem to work much better with my HW compared to when I was using 2.6 version of Pfsense.
                        No more odd NIC restarts when I load traffic on the network,

                        I am really happy right now and I love Pfsense. :)

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