Multi WAN seems to be poorly implemented

frater

I'm using pfsense 2.0 in a multi-LAN / multi-WAN scenario.
Quite often, especially on https connections (shopping sites or our own hosting server) we're getting kicked.
This is typical behaviour for badly implemented multi-WAN which I didn't expect on pfsense.

My general feeling of pfsense is that it's robust and flexible, but this is a bit of a downside….

I believe it's a bug that has been reported a long time ago and hasn't been solved yet.
I don't understand why it takes that long and even less why pfsense 2.0 is considered to be stable.

For the time being I created a gateway group where the different gateways are in different tiers.
I'm using that gateway group for port 80,443 and some other ports on which we're using http-traffic.

To avoid load-balancing problems it would be best to always use the same gateway for the same IP for at least several hours.

Any info regarding this issue is welcome.
I would like to know if anyone is at least trying to solve it.

Perry

Did it also happen with sticky connection enable?

cmb

Best to never load balance HTTPS, but sticky connections will work around that most of the time.

frater

Yes, sticky connections is/was enabled….

But, what's that bug that's mentioned in the list?
I haven't read about it being solved.

cmb

It's not an issue in 2.0 with multi-WAN.

frater

Horde gives me the explicit message that I'm coming from another IP all of a sudden….
What does "sticky" mean?
I mean... what's the timeframe?

jimp

Sticky keeps a client_ip+gateway_ip association for as long as a connection state is active. So as long as the browser holds the connection open.

On 2.1 I have added a box to let the user specify the length of time after the state expires to hold the association, so it can be made longer.

Supermule

When does 2.1 go live??

jimp

It will probably be sometime after March for that. Still lots of work to go there.

2.0.1 will be coming out shortly (maybe today) but it doesn't include that change.

dhatz

jimp,

Is the upcoming change to "sticky" in pfsense v2.1 still using pf's "sticky-address" feature?

In the *bsd mailing lists there have been several requests over the years to increase the sticky timeout to e.g. 30min, but no clear solution.

jimp

Yes, it is done the same way. The timeout for that is controller by pf's src.track timer (see pfctl -st)

dhatz

Thx jimp.

What would happen in a load-balancing pfsense setup with two gateways with sticky enabled, if one gateway failed? What would prevent pf from remembering the old (finished) sessions tracks for src.track (e.g. 30 minutes) and keep sending traffic its way?

I am having in mind the issue raised in
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-pf/2006-December/002860.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-pf/2006-December/002861.html

In that example they suggest using pfctl -K to remove source tracking entries.

jimp

I believe the way our multi-wan works none of that info applies, as it does some behind-the-scenes magic when a WAN fails that may be doing the right thing here already. Ermal would have to say for sure though.

frater

But what code does that checkbox execute?
Can I do something from the console….?

dhatz

To see the code, do a search, e.g.

fgrep lb_use_sticky /etc/inc/*

Basically it enables the "sticky-address" feature of pf.

jimp

The code triggered by the checkbox to activate sticky can be found in /etc/inc/interfaces.inc

As for the GUI field to set the timeout manually, here is what does that:
https://github.com/bsdperimeter/pfsense/commit/4573641589d50718b544b778cea864cfd725078a

frater

I really ment…
can I write some value to some pseudo-file in /proc or doesn't it work that way?

The checkbox / input field in the php-site does something...
Can you tell us what it does or can this be backported to 2.0

I'm insisting because it's a bit of a show stopper for my implementation....

jimp

Read my last post again, I provided everything you'd need to know to make the change on 2.0.1 by hand.

frater

Did you edit your previous post?….
Anyhow

I applied those 2 patches (I wasn't able to create a patch file from it, but downloaded the 2 raw files with fetch)
I set the timeout to 3600 seconds which should be sufficient.
If this works I will have the best of both worlds (equal spreading of bandwidth and stability)

Tomorrow I will know if it does its job better.

sticky.pfsense.png
sticky.pfsense.png_thumb

dhatz

@frater:

Tomorrow I will know if it does its job better.

So, what's your impression of the new src.track feature (i.e. sticky with a timeout)?

And have you tested how it handles failure of one of the two gateways? (see my question in the previous page)

TIA.