How to achieve more than 253 lan ip addresses ?

byrnie

Hi Everyone

Apologies if i have posted this in the wrong section,

I have setup a pfsense server in a student village with 3 nic cards, 2 x wan load balancing, 1 x lan with Dhcp,Dns,Proxy and captive portal and it works fantastic better than expected and the student village is a non-profit for the benifit of the students so the cost was brilliant this year has seen a spike in students not been able to afford accommodation and thus the village has taken on more apartments in the complex under a government grant scheme

This will bring the total head count form 220 to 340 thus leads me to my question

How to achieve more than 253 lan ip addresses ?

Could i create a second ip range on the lan nic card or would i need another lan nic card for new range and how would the dhcp handle this well

at the moment i have to many theory's and would like another perspective

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Supermule

http://techrepublic.com.com/i/tr/downloads/images/subnetting/subnetting_c.png

cmb

@Supermule:

http://techrepublic.com.com/i/tr/downloads/images/subnetting/subnetting_c.png

That. use a bigger LAN subnet. Or segregate the network into multiple networks with VLANs or separate physical interfaces. In this kind of scenario, the bigger LAN subnet is likely fine. In a corporate network I would segregate it.

byrnie

Thank you both so much never expected such prompt replies

I read up on subnets and understand the concept now.
Today i changed the bit count from 24 to 19 on the static lan address and it has allowed me from 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.31.255 which is more than ample

Such a simple solutions for what i thought would be a complex problem it shows how helpful and knowledgeable ye guys and girls are on this forum

I have one more question i have 3 computers i need to set on static mapping in the dhcp server but when i try to apply the static maps i get the follwing error message

The following input errors were detected:

* 192.168.1.234 is inside the range you specified.
* 192.168.1.237 is inside the range you specified.
* 192.168.1.238 is inside the range you specified.

Its seems odd thats its telling me that they are inside the range so i can not understand the nature of the error

kpa

If possible, change the address range from 192.168.0.0/19 to 10.n.0.0/19 where n is some random number 0-255. The 192.168.. addresses may cause problems in the future if you decide to allow vpn access to your network and the vpn clients happen to be in a network that uses 192.168.. addresses. The 10...* addresses are less used in home routers so they have lesser chance of address conflicts.

I think static dhcp mappings have to use an address that is outside of the dynamic range.

wallabybob

@kpa:

I think static dhcp mappings have to use an address that is outside of the dynamic range.

Correct. In DHCP server configuration the "range" really means range of addresses for dynamic address assignment. Static addresses need to come outside that range.

jimp

Just in case you wonder why the DHCP addresses must come outside of that range, the answer is here:

http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Why_can%27t_I_have_static_mappings_inside_my_DHCP_range%3F

byrnie

sorry for the delay in writing back

Ye hit the nail on the head i removed 50 address at the start of the range and can now use them for static addresses

Thanks a million for all ye're help