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    Design help for better control

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • johnpozJ
      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @moosport
      last edited by johnpoz

      You don't have to link them if you didn't want too.. If your just going to use vlan xyz on 1 switch and vlans abc on the other switch.

      You could still have a common vlan for managment, that is only uplinked by 1 switch and they could still be interconnected, they just wouldn't carry vlans over their uplinks that are not used on the actual switch, etc..

      As to not linking them for ease of troubleshooting? In what sense - at a loss to how that would help in troubleshooting anything to be honest.

      You understand you could do all kinds of different configurations you don't even really have to have 1 downstream from the other with shared uplink to the router..

      You could have multiple uplinks from each switch, that carry specific vlans, or only one network. to the router - depending on how many interfaces you have on the router. And the only reason you need to link the switches at all is for any vlans you want on the other switch, this could be just management vlan.. Or could be say you want something on switch 2, in vlan X and the uplink to the router for X is on switch 1..

      There nothing saying that that management of IP of the switch has to be in any specific vlan or can not be 2 different vlans if you want to isolate that from other devices for your 2 switches.

      The only thing I could see being problematic is unifi devices like to all be in the same L2 for discovery. But you can also do L3 adoption.. Once things are adopted they don't have to be in the same L2.. I completely manage my sons devices in his home on my controller, just over the internet, etc.

      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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        moosport @johnpoz
        last edited by

        @johnpoz said in Design help for better control:

        You could have multiple uplinks from each switch, that carry specific vlans, or only one network. to the router - depending on how many interfaces you have on the router. And the only reason you need to link the switches at all is for any vlans you want on the other switch, this could be just management vlan.. Or could be say you want something on switch 2, in vlan X and the uplink to the router for X is on switch 1..

        The only thing I could see being problematic is unifi devices like to all be in the same L2 for discovery. But you can also do L3 adoption.. Once things are adopted they don't have to be in the same L2.. I completely manage my sons devices in his home on my controller, just over the internet, etc.

        Good to know you can have multiple uplinks from the 1 switch to the router.

        For the unifi APs, will it be easier to put in all in a mgmt vlan together with the cloud key?

        johnpozJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • johnpozJ
          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @moosport
          last edited by johnpoz

          Yeah its much easier to just run your controller and all your unifi devices in the same L2.. But it can be done via L3 if you don't want to do that..

          This doesn't really need to be any sort of special "management" vlan - could just be your normal lan where only your trusted devices sit.. And you put all your non trusted sort of devices in other vlans.

          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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          • M
            moosport @johnpoz
            last edited by moosport

            @johnpoz

            For the last few days, I made some changes to configure the vlans as needed.

            NVR vm and Cams are in its own vlan 40. Viewing of video is accessible from normal lan.
            Guest vlan 50 is setup on Unifi APs using the controller.
            But devices is not getting IPs when connecting to guest network.
            Trace using wireshark to capture vlan traffic is seeing dhcpdiscover.

            dhcp trace.jpg
            pfsense guestvlan.jpg

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            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by

              You are capturing that on a client in the VLAN 50 subnet?

              What do you see if you capture on VLAN 50 in pfSense?

              Is the DHCP enabled on the VLAN 50 interface?

              Steve

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                moosport @stephenw10
                last edited by

                @stephenw10
                I setup port mirroring on the switch with wireshark on the PC.
                DHCP is enabled on the interface. I have not tried any trace on pfsense.. However, i do not see the dhcpdiscover in the dhcp logs.

                Screenshot from 2021-08-31 15-43-34.png

                johnpozJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • johnpozJ
                  johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @moosport
                  last edited by johnpoz

                  @moosport said in Design help for better control:

                  DHCP is enabled on the interface.

                  Doesn't matter if dhcp was enabled or not - if the interface is connected to the L2 network that discover goes out - it will be seen. A discover is seen on all devices in a network - its a broadcast. The dhcp server is the only one this going to answer is all.

                  If pfsense is not seeing the discover - then no its not going to hand out an offer. You have something wrong in your network if your vlan is not seeing the discover.

                  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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                  • M
                    moosport @johnpoz
                    last edited by

                    @johnpoz

                    The next trace to run is on the vswitch which both the interface and pfsense is connected to.

                    johnpozJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • johnpozJ
                      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @moosport
                      last edited by johnpoz

                      vswitch - so are you not passing the tag? did you set an id of 4095 in the portgroup on the vswitch..

                      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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                      • M
                        moosport @johnpoz
                        last edited by

                        @johnpoz

                        It is set to trunk. Ran trace at the vmnic but did not see dhcpdiscover traffic. At this point I'm not sure where the tags are being dropped.

                        Trunk is set from Unifi port (APs), both Unifi port and Aruba port, Aruba SFP+ port, portgroup vlan 4095.

                        lanportgroup.jpg

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                        • stephenw10S
                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                          last edited by

                          If you pcap on the parent NIC in pfSense you can see what VLANs traffic is tagged with when it arrives.

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                          • M
                            moosport @stephenw10
                            last edited by

                            @stephenw10
                            port25vlan50.jpg

                            I see it in the SFP+ going into Esx host.

                            Following these instruction to trace traffic for vmnic. No vlan traffic was captured.

                            https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.networking.doc/GUID-F1AC7100-FFBB-4414-9B70-E5537C15E192.html

                            Next step is to capture dropped packets. This will probably shed some light.
                            https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.networking.doc/GUID-84627D49-F449-4F77-B931-3C55E4A8ECA1.html

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                              moosport @moosport
                              last edited by stephenw10

                              Found out the setup requires vdswitch. Moving to physical.

                              johnpozJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • johnpozJ
                                johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @moosport
                                last edited by

                                @moosport said in Design help for better control:

                                vdswitch

                                So you have multiple esxi hosts? No mention of that

                                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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                                  moosport @johnpoz
                                  last edited by

                                  @johnpoz running the free version which only support vdswitch for first 60 days.

                                  johnpozJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • johnpozJ
                                    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @moosport
                                    last edited by

                                    @moosport you sure do not need vdswitches to do vlans on esxi.. My point is you make no mention of having multiple esxi hosts in a cluster - nor do you show such a thing on your drawing.

                                    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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                                    • M
                                      moosport @johnpoz
                                      last edited by

                                      @johnpoz
                                      No multiple hosts. Just one host.
                                      No vlan traffic is captured in vswitch. Only default vlan traffic is in the trace.

                                      johnpozJ 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • johnpozJ
                                        johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @moosport
                                        last edited by

                                        @moosport well where did you come up with you need vdswitch then?

                                        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

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • johnpozJ
                                          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @moosport
                                          last edited by johnpoz

                                          @moosport said in Design help for better control:

                                          No vlan traffic is captured in vswitch

                                          That has zero to do with vdswitch..

                                          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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                                          • M
                                            moosport @johnpoz
                                            last edited by

                                            @johnpoz root cause analysis was suggested in a different forum.

                                            Wire shark did capture vlan traffic on port going to ESX host. But pktcap-uw did not capture any on vmnic. Promiscuous mode was enabled too.

                                            Switch configuration is correct.

                                            Only data point which I still could not figure out is wireshark trace contains icmpv6 but not icmp dhcp discovery.

                                            Neither ipv6 is enable on pfsense or unifi.

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