Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Accessing the lan ip addresses of my remote carped firewalls

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved HA/CARP/VIPs
    4 Posts 3 Posters 1.1k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • J Offline
      jason0
      last edited by

      Hello,

      I have two firewalls configured with carp.  They are at my remote colo, and I access the network there via ipsec vpn.  I noticed recently that I could only access the lan ip address of the primary firewall, but not the secondary firewall.

      It makes sense: only one of the firewalls will have the ipsec vpn functioning while it's in master mode: the other firewall won't have a clue where to send response packets since there isn't a vpn there at all.  It would need to route through the master firewall.

      Is there a means to install a route that is dependent on the vpn NOT being present?  ie: firewall B is in carp backup mode, thus to access my side of the point to point vpn, it would need to route the packets through firewall A.

      –jason

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • G Offline
        geyser
        last edited by

        You can setup rules to allow access to the non CARP addresses of the boxes.  For example I have:

        192.168.48.2 - Master
        192.168.48.3 - Slave

        192.168.48.1 - CARP address

        To access the specific pfsense box, connect to the non virtual address on the box.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • V Offline
          vindenesen
          last edited by

          I think the solution to this has been mentioned on the forums somewhere. It involves creating Outbound NAT rules, such that when you want to access your secondary firewall through the VPN tunnel on the primary, the secondary firewall will see the primary firewall as the source. And therefore it will not try to send the reply over the VPN tunnel but instead to the primary firewall.

          Edit: It was actually on the wiki: https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/CARP_Secondary_Unreachable_Over_VPN

          Support the project by buying a Gold Subscription at https://portal.pfsense.org
          Running pfSense on SuperMicro A1SRI-2758F with ESXi 5.5

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • J Offline
            jason0
            last edited by

            Hi,

            This last one solved it for me, but it looked like the previous one had potential…

            --jason

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • First post
              Last post
            Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.