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    How to disable loadbalancing and use failover on dual wan config?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Routing and Multi WAN
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    • V
      V-man
      last edited by

      Thanks Hobo for helping out!!!

      This is not the hardware! I just re-did the system on another pc. I setup pfsense on different Internet networks and set up worked.

      Now I striped everything down to WAN/ Lan setup. I am having a problem even with trying to get out to the internet. I checked monitor, static ip on the cable modem and on pfsence interface. I enabled pass any from wan rule and could not ping Comcast wan interface.

      Have you ever come a cross that Comcast had issues with their SMC router modems and pfSence?

      Thanks again for helping out!!!

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      • H
        hoba
        last edited by

        I have heard from a lot of people using comcast and pfSense together. One common issue seems to be that the cablemodems sometimes need a reboot if you connect a new device (like replacing an old router with pfSense) as thy seem to cache tho old macadress for ages in their ARP-cache. I also have heard from people where the nexthopgateway seemed to not clear the ARP-cache and they had tto take down the line for 10-20 minutes before a new pfSense install was working there.

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        • V
          V-man
          last edited by

          Thanks Hobo for info!

          I also was wondering if static ip and enabled firewall on Cable modem router may also cause problems?

          Shell I use DHCP instead?

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          • H
            hoba
            last edited by

            For sure I would shut down the firewal of the cable modem. Maybe that's exactly what's happening, your DHCP IP gets dropped and that's why traffic stops then.

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            • V
              V-man
              last edited by

              All my thanks go to Hobo!!!

              You are the man!!!!

              That was the SMC 8014 Cable Modem - Comcast businesses gateway problem!!!!

              I disable DHCP, firewall, restarted the router couple of time since it was not renewing IP. And it worked like a charm!!!!!

              Thank you!!!! Thank you!!! Thank you!!!!!

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              • H
                hoba
                last edited by

                Glad this issue finally got resolved  :D

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                • C
                  cheesyboofs
                  last edited by

                  Sorry to hijack your post V-man but I’m trying to implement the very same thing as you “failover with no load-balance” but I’m not getting as far as you and wonder if one of you could give me some pointers.

                  My config:
                  Pfsense = v1.2
                  WAN 20MB = 82.29.156.0/22 SM = 255.255.252.0 GW = 82.29.156.1
                  Backup (OPT1) 2MB = 82.29.148.0/22 SM = 255.255.252.0 GW = 82.29.148.1
                  LAN = 192.168.100.0/24 SM = 255.255.255.0 GW = 192.168.100.254
                  Wireless = 192.168.101.0/24 SM = 255.255.255.0 GW = 192.168.101.254
                  http://www.cheesyboofs.co.uk/home.htm

                  I too have read the http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/MultiWanVersion1.2 document but got compleetly confused at the sticky connections as my understanding is that I don’t want any so that if my wan connection fails my mail server’s mail's will be re-routed out the fall back gateway.

                  So with  this in mind I tried to set up a lab environment on some spare hardware dropping the load balance rule from the pools and keeping WAN1->WAN2 and WAN2->WAN1 filters. This is where I got stuck, no matter what I do I cannot get it to fail over to Backup (OPT1) but the fact that others can and the fact that I’m not exactly thick means I must be missing something obvious. I think I’m just getting confused with the terminologies used in PFSENSE when I’m comparing it to other distributions I have used.

                  Any help you guys can give would be great

                  Author of pfSense themes:

                  DARK-ORANGE

                  CODE-RED

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                  • GruensFroeschliG
                    GruensFroeschli
                    last edited by

                    Did you set the gateway(s) of your LAN rule(s) to the failover pools?

                    We do what we must, because we can.

                    Asking questions the smart way: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

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                    • C
                      cheesyboofs
                      last edited by

                      At the moment I have a basic config with no pools setup.
                      I am driving remotely over VPN so don't want to get locked out.
                      This is what I have atm,




                      I did have mail -> out 'locked' to backup (OPT1) link but understand that when that link fails it needs to use the WAN link.

                      Reading another post,
                      http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,8994.0.html,

                      You said one can simply add more lines to the load-balance filter to balance out the faster modem! So could I not just have one load balance line,

                      2 lines with 2Mbit and 20Mbit
                      line1: 1 times in list
                      line2: 10 times in list

                      What happens in this scenario when one line goes down does it simply round robin on to the next working one or does it time out?

                      I just want some advice from you guy's on how you would best 'tweak' my config to get the most out of it with the most important thing being remote connectivity in the event of the WAN failing.

                      Cheers

                      Author of pfSense themes:

                      DARK-ORANGE

                      CODE-RED

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                      • C
                        cheesyboofs
                        last edited by

                        Hi there,

                        Right I have read your question a couple of times and I now see (with your help) where I went wrong.



                        For some reason web browsing works fine with either wan disconnected but I can only ping Google with WAN connected and I get a timeout using only the Backup, strange!

                        Also I still don’t understand how the three load balance rules work, If I have a dead link in all three rules how does it know which one to use?

                        I will play some more while I'm feeling brave.

                        Cheers for your help

                        Author of pfSense themes:

                        DARK-ORANGE

                        CODE-RED

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