Thankyou! - Loadbalance config + a little critisism

[Subnet]

Thankyou pfSense guys and gurus!

After a short search for a load balance solution, I came across pfSense which seemed to tick all boxes.

Initially trying v2, I dropped to v1.2.3 as the manual/guides were not 'obviously' compatible (later I saw how they could be.)
Although the guides still didn't produce the result they touted, I found another solution that required direct editing of the backup file.

Voila, success!

Solution being that for each balanced gateway, they are added to the list: 'gatewayx|pingx'. Whereas the web interface only lists 'wan|pingx', this being commented as such on the thread.

This method may possibly be an 'alternative' config option to add?

I found this method scaled, starting with 4 gateways, so far with 9 gateways.

I also found that I could setup multiple load balance policy's, as 2 of the gateways are part of a closed network (closed, but with internet access).
The 2 gateways were listed in the 'general' pool for internet balancing, plus again in their own pool for closed network balancing. Configured with a firewall rule, if a particular destination is required - pfSense will route, balanced, over the two routers.

Perfect! As this has condensed some very old hardware down to a single unit.

Single Point Of Failure? Maybe - but rebuilding this from scratch is an hour - not days/weeks waiting for a new proprietary unit.
(Plus, ignoring loadbalance, the connection can be re-routed temporarily - so true downtime is minutes from failure to network restore.)

So, in all, the only critisism is:

• This method works, so why do we have to manually edit - or - why does the 'official' way not work [the way I expect it to].

It's been fun. Thanks!

[eri--]

You have to be more verbose on the criticism path.
Which version of pfSense? etc….

[Subnet]

pfSense v1.2.3

Currently opened a thread with an odd issue regarding the setup to see if it's worth moving 'back' to v2.