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    PfSense and loadbalancing on windows 7?

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    • S
      SawyerX
      last edited by

      I'm trying to get load balancing working on windows 7. So I figured that I could maybe run a Virtual Pfsense with Vmware server.

      I only have one computer, 1 network card for internet, the second card is for IPTV so its a useless card.

      Now Is it possible to set pfsense with vmware somehow as a load balancer so the internet and everything gous trough it. I can connect one PPPOE session with the modem itself and one with PFsense.

      But I have no idea what to do with the network card at all. I guess I need virtual cards or virtual IPs or something. The PPPOE connected session was able to ping the internet just fine.

      However I dont know how to use that now. I tried to put the LAN IP into internet explorer proxy settings but it isnt working at all.
      Is this even possible with just one network card and one computer?

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      • P
        pirateghost
        last edited by

        do you know what load balancing is?

        how do you expect to load balance with ONE internet connection, ONE network card and ONE computer.  what exactly are you 'load balancing'?

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        • S
          SawyerX
          last edited by

          Who said aynthing about one internet connection? I can have as many as I like but they all use the same modem.

          Right now I'm loadbalancing by IP routing  by a small powershell script with modifying the routing tables. Works fine with newsgroups where I can connect together 5x 20/20Mbit lines to a total download speed of 100Mbit.
          Works also fine with Vmware and several VirtualXP OSes. Each running its own torrent or they all seeding the same torrent which again combines the effective seeding speed or downloading speed of multiple torrents. Sometimes I even use ISP bindings each to its own PPPOE interface, but works only locally or in my country where I can bind the 2 or 3 strongest ISPS each to its own PPPOE.
          Works also fine when downloading bigger files from my home to my work location with 5x virtualxp, each running filzila server and the receiving computer uses free download manager, where i can use the 5 mirrors to combine the speed to 100Mbit.

          For all that I dont need more then 1 computer, one NIC and one modem.

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          • S
            SawyerX
            last edited by

            What I just want to know basically is if this technique is used for running load balancing on the one and only computer or do you still need a middle computer acting as a router.

            Also if this is only used so that you can actually run Windows under and do other stuff with windows and use vmware/Vbox to run also a router on that computer. But you still must have at last 2 network cards and your second computer connected to the one running Vmware.

            Since I already have one computer running windows 7 and acting as a IPTV server, adding a virtual PFsense on top of that wouldnt be a big problem at all.

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              pirateghost
              last edited by

              it may be possible.  set up your virtual machine and use the virtual networking to provide the different connections to pfsense.  once you have the load balance going in pfsense, point your windows desktop to the virtual machine as its gateway.  then all traffic would go through the VM before it got to your desktop.  i assume you just have static ips for the different pppoe connections?

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              • S
                SawyerX
                last edited by

                Yeah. Well thats easier said then done. I have made now 4 virtual network cards with vmware. All are bridged to the one physicsl NIC I got for internet. All is well connected from inside Vmware.
                http://www.2shared.com/file/10420777/a86b867c/Capture.html

                Now I dont know hot to actually make use of this connection. I mean what Must I do so that the host computers starts using that. I somehow believe this isnt really possible at this point now since the host computer should somehow connect now to this 192.168.1.10 IP. But how could that be done actually?

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                • S
                  SawyerX
                  last edited by

                  Do I assume right that the computer which wants to use this Vmware connections now must have a getway of 192.168.1.10 because that is the IP of the virtual LAN interface pfSense shows? Its very confusing at this point now.

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                  • S
                    SawyerX
                    last edited by

                    I got it working. The WindowsXP didnt like to use the 192.168.1.10 as the gateway for some reason. But the window 7 Virtual os does. So virtually its working.

                    Cant test on the main computer right now cuz i'm working on remote. Will test tomorrow there.

                    However setting up load balancing is another monster!!! Especially when working with the 2.0 build wich isnt documented well at all ???

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                    • S
                      SawyerX
                      last edited by

                      I managed to get load balancing working now on Both WinXP and Win7 guessts oses with PFsense 1.2. All runing virtual. Win7/XP and PFsense on my Quad 9300 3Ghz with 8GB memory.

                      PFsense 1.2 has ok manuals but saddly it only supports one PPPOE interface. Anyway the speed is up to 40Mbit now.

                      It also works much better with Windows7 then XP.

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                      • S
                        SawyerX
                        last edited by

                        It works. I was able to combine 3x PPPOE connections to a total speed of 60Mbit.
                        The only drawback is I have to run 3 PFsense VM's.

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                          blewis
                          last edited by

                          Would using three commodity routers + a gigabit smart switch be a better/reliable solution, with the routers doing the pppoe and running a single instance of pfsense w/ vmware.  With such high speeds, I personally don't like virtualizing pfsense.  A good "green" pc for pfsense w/ intel nic is good also.

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                          • S
                            SawyerX
                            last edited by

                            Yeah sure but I dont even have electricity for 1 router, let alone 4 and still running a second PC then Yikes. This will have to do.

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                            • E
                              Efonnes
                              last edited by

                              This thread may possibly be of interest to you, especially if your ISP supports what is being discussed there: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,23094.0.html

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