Port forwarding outside DHCP range not working

livius · Jul 3, 2016, 11:28 AM

Hello,

In my setup, pfSense was considered as a free alternative to a future paid FortiGate equipment, it's purpose is routing, firewall, traffic analysis.
And so the previous ClearOS setup which was working just fine was replaced for evaluation with free pfSense.

I've wasted a few days with unsuccessful attempts to make port forwarding work in pfSense 2.3.2 and previous.

The setup:
1 Public static IP, ns, gw provided by ISP
2 lan server running Zentyal (name server, dhcp, domain controller, email server, file server), and virtualbox. (static ip 192.168.0.3)
3 lan NAS running Synology (another great piece of equipment) (static ip 192.168.0.4)
4 pfSense (gateway) installed on server in virtual box, bridged adapters. (public static ip and static ip 192.168.0.1).

Results:
After defining according to help/manual/faq in Nat rules and port forwarding:

I can access from outside wan the zentyal server which is also the lan name server.
I can't access the synology nas or any other lan static IP.

pfSense dhcp is disabled, and it will stay that way, because of samba of PDC, and many other reasons.

So can pfSense do port forwarding if it's dhcp service is disabled, can it do port forwarding outside of dhcp range?
I've tried various settings alias, or adding static mapping or whatever.
If I allow it to do dhcp, port forwarding works, if not it doesn't.

Although I'm one step from going back to all other solutions which just work (ClearOS, Zentyal, cheap home router, windows xp); I'm still trying to make it work because it appears I'm one click away from making it work.

Thanks and regards.

johnpoz · Jul 3, 2016, 11:45 AM

"So can pfSense do port forwarding if it's dhcp service is disabled"

What would dhcp have to do with port forwarding.. So yeah…

As to just working - that would be pfsense.. A port forward is really clickity clickity 10 seconds to accomplish.. Have you gone over the troubleshooting guide?

https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Port_Forward_Troubleshooting

How is it you have wasted days on this?? Port forwarding even troubleshooting to find your mistakes takes all of a couple of minutes. Does the traffic hit your wan? Sniff, does it leave your lan headed to where you wanted to forward it? Does it get an answer back..

Do you devices have internet through pfsense? Or is pfsense not even their gateway?