ESXi problems with IPTV
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Hi all, sorry for the NOOB question.
I have a dedicated pfSense machine that serves my home network as well as my IPTV service.
I have 1 port comming from IPTV router from ISP bridged to 3 other ports each one attached to my 3 set up boxes. So far so good. I get IPTV signal on all devices.
I recently moved my pfSense to ESXi. Then problems started...
If I assign IPTV ports to pfSense VM with ESXi vNICs my IPTV stop working. Something on ESXi is blocking IPTV signal, maybe IGMP is getting blocked, I really don't know...The only way I can get IPTV working is direct assigning IPTV NIC to pfSense VM via direct passthrough. This is not ideal as with passthrough enabled I loose the ability to snapshot my pfSense VM and other important features that get disabled with passthrough mode.
I tryed several different configurations on ESXi port groups with no luck: Promiscuous mode, MAC address changes and Forged transmits enabled and disabled and nothing seams to get it working.
Internet is working great with ESXi NIC, the only problem I have is with IPTV.
I have no idea on how to solve that.
ESXi: 6.7.0 Update 3 (Build 15160138)
no vCenter
Adapter Type: VMXNET3
NICs: i350 / igb0
pfSense: 2.4.5-RELEASE-p1 (amd64)Any advises will be much appreciated
kind regards
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Any ideas?
Kind regards
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Have you read the VMware docs here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.7/com.vmware.vsphere.networking.doc/GUID-50AF72D4-F766-4D68-8330-BA15250E4E99.html?
Also found a KB article on the VMware site here: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2044735.
Found these with a 1-minute Google search using the terms "esxi igmp". Check the links out and see if they help. My guess matches yours, I suspect the issue is related to multicast not being handled by the vSwitch.
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Hi, thanks for the reply.
According to these docs (and a few others I found on-line) ESXi should forward igmp packages out of the box:
“ In basic multicast filtering mode, a vSphere Standard Switch or vSphere Distributed Switch forwards multicast traffic for virtual machines according to the destination MAC address of the multicast group.”
And also:
“ In ESX/ESXi, Multicast works the same way it does in a physical environment and the requirements and considerations are also the same.”
Regarding Multicast Snooping “ ... the switch dispatches multicast traffic more precisely by using IP addresses....” what would make it more restricted then default mode.
As far as I understand from these docs default configuration should work out of the box and this is not the case as problem persists.
Am I missing something?
Kind regards
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Well, the next thing I would check via Google searches is whether or not there are any outstanding bugs in ESXi with regards to IGMP. The fact it works when you enable NIC pass-through really does seem to point to the vSwitch as the most likely culprit. Might also be the virtual NIC, though. Try searching for hits on the VMXNET3 driver and multicast.
