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    Design frustrations with PFsense, VMWare, vLANs, Routing & LACP...

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved L2/Switching/VLANs
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    • GrimsonG
      Grimson Banned @lburns
      last edited by

      @lburns said in Design frustrations with PFsense, VMWare, vLANs, Routing & LACP...:

      If I can get these non-routable issues to go away (make them act like they are on the same L2 net), all while maintaining the ability to manage them as if they were segmented (like they should be), then that would be ideal.

      Sounds like you need a good L3 capable managed switch. pfSense is not the right tool for this.

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      • DerelictD
        Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate
        last edited by

        You want Layer 2 port isolation, Private VLANs, etc. Your solution is at Layer 2, not in the firewall.

        Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
        A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
        DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
        Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

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        • johnpozJ
          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
          last edited by johnpoz

          Yea as Derelict repeated what I stated - if you want to isolate devices on a specific L2 from talking to each other you do what with your L2 infrastructure.. private vlans would allow you to have control which devices could talk to which other devices that are on the same L2/L3 network..

          So for example you fire up a private vlan... device on port A could talk to device on port C, but not on port B. All devices could talk to port H which is where the gateway is connected so they could get off that L3..

          Your AP is connected to say port G.. You could allow those wireless device to talk to port B, but not C or A, etc. etc. etc..

          All of this is outside of the scope of pfsense - since pfsense is L3 firewall. What switches do you have to work with? Do you have budget to get new ones?

          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
          SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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          • L
            lburns @johnpoz
            last edited by

            @johnpoz

            We have many Dell PowerConnect 8024 10G and other PowerConnect 1gb switches.

            All we need in abundance

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            • johnpozJ
              johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
              last edited by

              then yeah you should be good - I would assume they could do port isolation, ie private vlans - not sure what dell calls it.

              An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
              If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
              Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
              SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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              • S
                sundarnet
                last edited by sundarnet

                Ive had a similar issue
                esxi6.5 server running vms with vlan id added to the vmware NICs
                6 WAN loadbalanced pfsense then to another pfsense squidguard firewall for siteblocking as squid will NOT work via a loadbalanced connection at all
                my solution was to use UniFi hardware switches and AP's combined with pfsense firewall for routing.
                the Unifi Controller enables the use of vLAN tagging for switch ports and separate wifi SSID's so your wifi users are vlan tagged depending on the wifi SSID they join, as well as being able to tag any port on any unifi switch among other things.
                then vlan networks in pfsense with obvious firewall rules for segragating networks and allowing different devices through to whatever network you need.
                then bonjour accross vlans and networks was avahi enabled and needed networks selected and select repeat mdns packets across networks 'as i needed the bonjour traffic to pass for air print capabilities and other minor bonjour services to work
                just pulling my hair out over the routing for my PBX server's in/out SIP trunk and forcing it to use a single WAN connection from behind the squid pfsense vm not though squid though mind you, around it,the other strange thing about this network is I have the 6 WAN connections vLAN tagged through a different network and am wirelessly routing through a separate network over about 800-900 meters all using these sweet little UniFi switches
                adding in for now I am having issues with old netbios name resolution across vlan networks

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                • johnpozJ
                  johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                  last edited by johnpoz

                  @sundarnet said in Design frustrations with PFsense, VMWare, vLANs, Routing & LACP...:

                  now I am having issues with old netbios name resolution across vlan networks

                  Yah think? Now sure you think that is suppose to work across subnets - ever ;) its a broadcast, why should it or how could it cross L2s?

                  Windows solution to this was a wins server ;)

                  An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                  If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                  Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                  SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                  • S
                    sundarnet
                    last edited by sundarnet

                    Pretty sure I got it to work without a WINS server
                    in the DNS Resolver I selected
                    Register DHCP leases in the DNS Resolver and
                    Register DHCP static mappings in the DNS Resolver
                    I also created host override for the host in question
                    now my normal windows drive mappings work without change

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                    • johnpozJ
                      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                      last edited by johnpoz

                      that is not a netbios discovery, that is just dns working how it should.

                      Here I tried to connect to

                      \\testhost
                      

                      It first tries dns query, with my search suffix (domain attached) to my dns. the testhost.local.lan, it gets back from dns NX.. So it then tries a NB broadcast for it..

                      broadcast.png

                      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                      SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                      • S
                        sundarnet @johnpoz
                        last edited by

                        @johnpoz I like the explanation on that, I needed that earlier instead of this.

                        Yah think? Now sure you think that is suppose to work across subnets - ever ;) its a broadcast, why should it or how could it cross L2s?

                        Windows solution to this was a wins server ;)
                        ;)
                        thanks for the help though
                        I still got it to work without a WINS server ;)

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                        • DerelictD
                          Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate
                          last edited by

                          As he demonstrated, it tries DNS first. After that fails it tries NETBIOS.

                          DNS works just fine across subnets.

                          Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
                          A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
                          DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
                          Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

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                          • S
                            sundarnet
                            last edited by

                            it still works without a WINS server and the needed info would have been better than this comment! ;)

                            johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator 7 days ago

                            @sundarnet said in Design frustrations with PFsense, VMWare, vLANs, Routing & LACP...:

                            now I am having issues with old netbios name resolution across vlan networks
                            

                            Yah think? Now sure you think that is suppose to work across subnets - ever ;) its a broadcast, why should it or how could it cross L2s?

                            Windows solution to this was a wins server ;)

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                            • S
                              sundarnet
                              last edited by

                              and Im also using Avahi to allow bonjour traffic across vLAN's for Airprint capabilities which works very nicely

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                              • johnpozJ
                                johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                last edited by johnpoz

                                Yeah dns works, that is not what you asked about - you asked about netbios resolution..

                                Which does NOT work across subnets, because it is a broadcast discovery. Was my response a bit snarky - maybe.. It was a stupid question to be honest, you used a term "netbios" which by its very nature tells you it wouldn't work across subnet without wins ;)

                                Where did you come up with the term to use, if you don't understand its meaning?

                                Have a read
                                https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-netbios-name-resolution-really-works/

                                An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                                • S
                                  sundarnet
                                  last edited by sundarnet

                                  I didn't ask a question just made a comment on what I was trying to do. I must admit my brain was fried after doing that setup in 3-4 days in 2 locations, my own/home location is a lot smaller however,
                                  then you gave a sparky comment not a solution, after which you gave a semi solution after I found it myself and commented ;)
                                  just pulling you up on the fact I thought you were here to help not just give cool comments and stuff ;)
                                  and as little as I know I do try to post solutions to problems if I can

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                                  • johnpozJ
                                    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                    last edited by johnpoz

                                    No I gave you a solution to your question.. How you resolve netbios over subnets is with a wins server.. Its been like that for like 30 years ;) Back in the days of when windows 3.11 was new..

                                    Or you could setup lmhost file as well ;)

                                    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                    If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                    Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                    SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                                    • S
                                      sundarnet
                                      last edited by

                                      @sundarnet said in Design frustrations with PFsense, VMWare, vLANs, Routing & LACP...:

                                      adding in for now I am having issues with old netbios name resolution across vlan networks

                                      still wondering how you see this as a question ? its a statement.

                                      adding in for now I am having issues with old netbios name resolution across vlan networks

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                                      • DerelictD
                                        Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate
                                        last edited by

                                        The solution to your problem is to install a WINS server or me sure DNS resolution is working properly.

                                        Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
                                        A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
                                        DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
                                        Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

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                                        • johnpozJ
                                          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                          last edited by johnpoz

                                          If you want to resolve "netbios" names across subnets then you either run wins, or some other nbss.. wins is MS version of that... I suggest you read the old rfc 1001, and 1002 ;) From the late 80s...

                                          Who does netbios name resolution any more.. Even MS is trying to retire it
                                          https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/networking/technologies/wins/wins-top
                                          "If you have already deployed WINS on your network, it is recommended that you deploy DNS and then decommission WINS."

                                          Or you can do lmhost file, if windows still reads that? I would assume so..

                                          If what your actually wanting to do is resolve the host without a fqdn, then correctly setup your search suffix on your machines so they append the correct domain to your host. So your dns query is a fqdn and not just host name.

                                          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                          SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                                          • S
                                            sundarnet
                                            last edited by

                                            now you guys are just rambling I already solved my issue myself no thanks to your sparky comments
                                            and now you are posting the same solutions I found already
                                            so why ?

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