Effect of bridge on interfaces

[craigh]

Hi

I'm a pfsense newbie…. Have pfsense behind a Cisco 877, 3 x basic, static interfaces, all with any to any rules on the firewall. All in the same subnet range, in order to test.

Internet
|
Cisco 877 (GW 192.168.1.1)
|
WAN (192.168.1.30)
Pfsense -- OPT1 (192.168.1.130)
|
LAN (192.168.1.55)

When I bridge the interfaces (LAN to WAN, OPT1 to WAN) I can ping everything. Without it I get problems. Current default gateway for WAN/LAN/OPT is 192.168.1.1 (Cisco)

Is there any real disadvantages to bridging the interfaces?

I'd like to change subnets, use NAT (from WAN) across both LAN and OPT1 in the near future.

thanks for your help

Craig

[Cry Havok]

What netmasks are you using?

If you're using a /24 then the hosts will be assuming that the packets don't need routed and so you need the bridging to make it work.  You probably want to cover the basics of how routing and subnets work before going much further ;)

[craigh]

Thanks for the info. Yes you are right /24, didn't realise I was being dumb there :)

However I just changed the LAN interface to 192.168.2.55 and took off the bridge. Can't ping this ip.

Anything I else I should do? (add a static route to Cisco? for 192.168.2.x)

thanks again

[Cry Havok]

Have you enabled a firewall rule to allow it to be pinged?

As for access to the 192.168.2/24 network from the 192.168.1/24 network, do you need that?  By default the pfSense host will be NATing all traffic from 192.168.2/24.  If you want to route instead you'll need to disable NAT.