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    High Avail secondary node IPs - How to find it

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

      So 192.168.35.6 is the WAN CARP VIP for the HA pair? You shouldn't have to do anything at the CLI. When the VIP fails over the secondary should try to connect.

      What is logged on the other side?

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        michmoor LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance @stephenw10
        last edited by

        @stephenw10
        So for clarity

        The NATs are like this

        192.168.35.6 <> x.x.188.125 - CARP VIP
        192.168.35.5 <> x.x.188.124 - Secondary WAN pfsense
        192.168.35.4 <> x.x.188.123 - Primary WAN pfsense

        So when I failover to backup what i see on my firewall is UDP/500 traffic coming from the Secondary WAN interface (not the CARP) which i found odd. I see that happening for a few times and then after awhile i see the CARP VIP finally reach out and establish a VPN

        Firewall: NetGate,Palo Alto-VM,Juniper SRX
        Routing: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
        Switching: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
        Wireless: Unifi, Aruba IAP
        JNCIP,CCNP Enterprise

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          michmoor LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance @michmoor
          last edited by michmoor

          @stephenw10
          I think i figured out the problem.
          The firewall is behind a NAT box
          When i initiate a P1 connection its trying to talk out on port 500.

          Obviously, this breaks IKE all together as after the translation, IKE drops packets.

          NAT-T is set to Force. Yet its still trying to go out on port 500.
          Any ideas as to why its doing that?

          I have also restarted the IPsec daemon process but same results.

          edit

          Confirmed. This is for sure happening. On the Cisco i see the translations, Its trying on port 500 even though NAT-T is set to Force

          udp 103.127.188.124:20402 192.168.35.5:20402 x.x.92.128:500 x.x.92.128:500

          Firewall: NetGate,Palo Alto-VM,Juniper SRX
          Routing: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
          Switching: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
          Wireless: Unifi, Aruba IAP
          JNCIP,CCNP Enterprise

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            michmoor LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance @michmoor
            last edited by

            @stephenw10

            Ok...what a marathon day with IPsec.

            I think i figured out the problem and now failover happens faster.

            There was an Outbound NAT policy that said
            Interface: WAN
            Source: Any
            Destination: Any
            Nat Address: 'CARP WAN Address'

            That seemed incorrect because my assumption is that any source address would include the firewall source address as well.
            So i changed the source to 'LAN subnets' and things are looking much better.

            Failover is quicker but i do find that in some cases i have to hop onto thee new Master firewall and initiate P1/P2 (it doesn't initiate right away sometimes).

            Firewall: NetGate,Palo Alto-VM,Juniper SRX
            Routing: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
            Switching: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
            Wireless: Unifi, Aruba IAP
            JNCIP,CCNP Enterprise

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            • V
              viragomann @michmoor
              last edited by viragomann

              @michmoor said in High Avail secondary node IPs - How to find it:

              There was an Outbound NAT policy that said
              Interface: WAN
              Source: Any
              Destination: Any
              Nat Address: 'CARP WAN Address'

              That seemed incorrect because my assumption is that any source address would include the firewall source address as well.

              That's correct. Outbound traffic from the firewall itself must not be natted to the CARP VIP.

              If you have multiple local subnets and want to use any for the source you can override the default outbound NAT rule by additional ones for the firewall itself at the top of the rule set:

              6037f6d5-0d87-42d0-93ca-2933acedacca-grafik.png

              Also remember, that connections to port 500 must keep the port static.

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              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                Yup, that^.

                Outbound NAT rules should almost never use source 'any'. Always define the subnets you actually need translation from to avoid over matching. IPSec is most commonly broken by that but other things can be.

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                • M
                  michmoor LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance @stephenw10
                  last edited by

                  @stephenw10
                  So on my firewall, i have the following SNAT rules. Do i need to create one for NAT-T as shown in your picture @viragomann

                  03d022a1-0989-43da-9b60-7163cb14630f-image.png

                  Firewall: NetGate,Palo Alto-VM,Juniper SRX
                  Routing: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
                  Switching: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
                  Wireless: Unifi, Aruba IAP
                  JNCIP,CCNP Enterprise

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                  • V
                    viragomann @michmoor
                    last edited by

                    @michmoor
                    No, if you don't have a manual rule natting to any other IP than WAN address (e.g. CARP), you don't need a specific rule for IPSec NAT-T.
                    However, I assumed, we were talking about a CARP setup.

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                    • stephenw10S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by

                      But I would set a source for that manual rule over the VPN so it can never over-match traffic that shouldn't be NAT'd.

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                        michmoor LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance @viragomann
                        last edited by

                        @viragomann Sorry i sent a screen shot of my own pfsense not in HA mode but i wanted to ensure i didn't need to do any SNAT rules here

                        Firewall: NetGate,Palo Alto-VM,Juniper SRX
                        Routing: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
                        Switching: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
                        Wireless: Unifi, Aruba IAP
                        JNCIP,CCNP Enterprise

                        V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • M
                          michmoor LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance @stephenw10
                          last edited by

                          @stephenw10
                          So you mean for source address use the WAN interface?

                          Firewall: NetGate,Palo Alto-VM,Juniper SRX
                          Routing: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
                          Switching: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
                          Wireless: Unifi, Aruba IAP
                          JNCIP,CCNP Enterprise

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                          • stephenw10S
                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                            last edited by

                            Nope the source should be the subnet (or subnets) that need to be translated to the VPN address. So whatever internet subnet(s) you;re routing over the VPN.

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                            • V
                              viragomann @michmoor
                              last edited by

                              @michmoor said in High Avail secondary node IPs - How to find it:

                              @viragomann Sorry i sent a screen shot of my own pfsense not in HA mode but i wanted to ensure i didn't need to do any SNAT rules here

                              In a CARP set up you might have an outbound NAT rule in place, natting the source address to the CARP VIP. Maybe your outbound NAT is also in manual mode, not hybrid.
                              In this case you need an additional rule for pfSense itself as shown in my screenshot above. But it would be sufficient to have the last one of these if you don't need ISAKMP (NAT-T doesn't use it, as far as I know).
                              And the NAT-T rule in my screen is due to using a specific outbound IP.

                              @stephenw10 said in High Avail secondary node IPs - How to find it:

                              Nope the source should be the subnet (or subnets) that need to be translated to the VPN address.

                              Hint: you can also state an alias here by selecting "Network" and entering the network alias with a /32 mask.

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                                michmoor LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance @viragomann
                                last edited by

                                @viragomann @stephenw10

                                I appreciate you folk working with me on this thread. I think i ironed out all the issues and/or misunderstandings i was having here.

                                Appreciate yall !

                                Firewall: NetGate,Palo Alto-VM,Juniper SRX
                                Routing: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
                                Switching: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
                                Wireless: Unifi, Aruba IAP
                                JNCIP,CCNP Enterprise

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