Gateway tier priority backwards?

repomanz

Hi folks - maybe i'm reading this wrong in the help pages. What I understand is that in a gateway group, the interface connection has priority values. Meaning, if i have interfaces that are defined as tier 1 within the gateway group that they should take priority over interfaces within the same gateway group that are defined as tier 2.

Not sure why but my tier 1 interfaces seem to be taking lower priority than the tier 2. Meaning, the amount of traffic coming into and out of my tier 2 defined interfaces is much greater than the tier 1 interfaces. I have checked logs and such and my tier 1 interfaces are not going down.

thoughts?

repo

repomanz

** bump **

Do i understand the documentation correctly? Is this a bug perhaps? My tier interfaces take priority over the tier interfaces. A side note, my interfaces are openvpn clients.

heper

your vpn provider probably pushes a default route that overwrites the policy routing.

check 'dont pull routes' & try again

repomanz

I have checked on all vpn sessions (for both tier 1 and tier 2 providers)

don't pull routes
don't add/remove routes

repomanz

Hi folks - here is what i'm talking about for example. 1 day of traffic. Notice provider B appears to be handling all the traffic.

VPN Provider A Connection # 1 UDP4 up Tue Jan 2 0:16:44 2018 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:16234 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1197 14.62 MiB / 629 KiB

VPN Provider A Connection # 2 UDP4 up Tue Jan 2 0:16:39 2018 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:36865 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1197 16.01 MiB / 4.67 MiB

VPN Provider A Connection # 3 UDP4 up Tue Jan 2 0:16:39 2018 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:48592 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1197 2.22 GiB / 95.97 MiB

VPN Provider A Connection # 4 UDP4 up Tue Jan 2 0:16:40 2018 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:58877 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1197 16.01 MiB / 4.63 MiB

VPN Provider A Connection # 5 UDP4 up Tue Jan 2 0:16:40 2018 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8290 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1197 16.02 MiB / 4.62 MiB

VPN Provider B Connection # 1 UDP4 up Tue Jan 2 14:53:30 2018 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:24262 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1197 601.69 MiB / 1.14 GiB

VPN Provider B Connection # 2 UDP4 up Tue Jan 2 14:53:29 2018 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:19959 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1197 4.01 GiB / 3.48 GiB

VPN Provider B Connection # 3 UDP4 up Tue Jan 2 14:53:25 2018 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:49613 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1197 99.69 MiB / 1.44 GiB

VPN Provider B Connection # 4 UDP4 up Tue Jan 2 14:53:33 2018 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:13192 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1197 181.82 MiB / 1.54 GiB

VPN Provider B Connection # 5 UDP4 up Tue Jan 2 14:53:32 2018 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:51944 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1197 1.54 GiB / 2.48 GiB

Derelict

What is defined on your gateway groups? WAN interfaces or VPN provider gateways?

Post your policy routing rules and gateway group configurations.

repomanz

Each OpenVPN Client has it's own interface
Each of these interfaces, including WAN are in the single gateway group

Gateway group configuration:
WAN = Never
All VPN interfaces = Tier 1
Trigger = packet loss or high latency

LAN rule routes traffic out of gateway group.

Derelict

Load balancing has no way to know how much traffic a particular state will end up transferring when it is created. It balances states among connections, not traffic. The fact that you show approximately the same number of states on each connection means it is working.

ETA: Moving to Multi-WAN

repomanz

I'm not following your statement. If you look at the 2 providers, VPN A shows megabytes. VPN B shows gigabytes. And if i understand, the LB method is round robin so over time these numbers should be roughly the same.

Derelict

It doesn't matter. They both have 5 states. Again, when you make a connection it has no idea how much traffic is going to go over it.

If VPN A has 5 states established and VPN B has 4, the new connection goes out VPN B. How much traffic has gone over the states in the past is not evaluated. In fact, the one with the most traffic on it might be idle at the time the new state is created and never transfer another byte.

repomanz

are there any plans to change LB algorithms? like least connection?

Derelict

No. I made a reference already that shows why that would be folly. A state that has transferred 100GB might never transfer another byte. There is no way for the firewall to know or predict with any accuracy what is going to happen based on what has happened. And it is impossible to move states between interfaces to correct later.

You can skew the algorithm regarding the number of states put on each circuit with the gateway weights but that is about it.

For example two gateways in a group, both tier 1. The first gateway has a weight of 4, the second a weight of 1. 4 out of 5 states - or 80% - will be created on the first gateway, 20% on the second.

Another reference:

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=124373.msg697215#msg697215

repomanz

I did an experiment. I turned off all but 1 of the VPN interfaces with VPN B. That left me with

5 VPN A clients running
1 VPN B client running

The gategroup detected the 4 VPN B clients were down and now all traffic is being routed through the sole VPN B client.

The only difference between the two VPN client configurations is that VPN B uses a TLS key where as VPN A does not.

This looks like a defect. I have 30ish clients running various activities behind this firewall. I should see a significant increase in the VPN A clients activity but I am not.

Derelict

Post your rules.

There is not a problem with Load Balancing. It does what it does very well. See the other thread I posted. Every time I test it because someone claims it doesn't work right it works fine. Not going to do it again.

5 VPN A clients running
1 VPN B client running

I don't understand at all what you are doing there. Going to need a much better description.

If you have 5 VPN clients running to one provider they all need assigned interfaces and they all need gateways in the gateway group if you want them to be utilized in that manner.

repomanz

I've pseudo posted my rules above. What do you want to see specifically? glad to grab screen shots of the areas you want to look at.

Derelict

Start with a screen shot of the gateway group. If you don't have 6 gateways there you're not going to be utilizing 6 OpenVPN client instances.

repomanz

** edit - didn't know you had requested screen shot. screen grab for gateway group : https://imgur.com/a/I4Z0f

I did another test recently 2 days ago.

All openvpn clients have assigned interfaces. The only change to default interface is checking disallowing bogon networks.
VPN A does not have a specific TLS key.
VPN A has 5 openvpn client sessions / interfaces
VPN B does have a specific TLS key
VPN B has 1 openvpn client session / interface
All 6 are defined in the gateway group.
Within the gateway group WAN is set to never
All 6 interfaces are set to tier 1

VPN A#1 1.06 MiB / 50 KiB
VPN A#2 1.27 MiB / 710 KiB
VPN A#3 1.41 MiB / 888 KiB
VPN A#4 1.65 MiB / 1.64 MiB
VPN A#5 1.27 MiB / 709 KiB

VPN B#1 2.52 GiB / 4.18 GiB

I have 30 clients behind this firewall and the above information is for 2 days of collection
VPN A interfaces only begin taking traffic when I specifically stop the openvpn client session of VPN B

Is there something unique about load balancing and a TLS key being used with the openvpn client, gateway group or some other dependency?

GruensFroeschli

As Derelic already pointed out: The Loadbalancer balances connections, not traffic.

How do you know that your clients are actually creating new connections all the time?
Those 2.52/4.18 GiB you see on VPN B#1 could be from a single connection.

repomanz

@GruensFroeschli:

As Derelic already pointed out: The Loadbalancer balances connections, not traffic.

How do you know that your clients are actually creating new connections all the time?
Those 2.52/4.18 GiB you see on VPN B#1 could be from a single connection.

I understand this, even before it was mentioned. However it is evidence it's not loading properly or something I don't understand. Do you think 30 clients over 2 days are going to only transfer kilobytes of traffic? That doesn't pass my smoke test.

***edit: i just dumped the active states on the firewall. the VPN A interfaces 1 - 5 are not in the table with exception of these entries:

VPN A 3 icmp xx.xx.xx.xx:7611 -> xx.xx.xx.xx:7611 0:00 20.866 K / 0 571 KiB / 0 B
VPN A 5 icmp xx.xx.xx.xx:8466 -> xx.xx.xx.xx:8466 0:00 20.867 K / 0 571 KiB / 0 B
VPN A 4 tcp xx.xx.xx.xx:63300 (xx.xx.xx.xx:63032) -> xx.xx.xx.xx:443 ESTABLISHED:ESTABLISHED 5.449 K / 5.46 K 231 KiB / 762 KiB
VPN A 1 icmp xx.xx.xx.xx:7229 -> xx.xx.xx.xx:7229 0:00 20.866 K / 0 571 KiB / 0 B
VPN A 2 icmp xx.xx.xx.xx:7271 -> xx.xx.xx.xx:7271 0:00 20.865 K / 0 571 KiB / 0 B
VPN A 4 icmp xx.xx.xx.xx:8068 -> xx.xx.xx.xx:8068 0:00 20.866 K / 0 571 KiB / 0 B

Derelict

That is just one connection. Not a connection from 30 clients.

That is the amount of traffic that has been transmitted over THAT connection since its creation.

Every TCP connection gets its own state.

Load balancing works fine, though it often doesn't match users' misunderstandings about how it should be behaving. See the other thread.