pfSense SSH connection between 2 different LAN's dropping after 1 minute

chippey5

Hi,

I have 2 LAN networks and two hosts to keep it simple in this topic:

LAN1: 192.168.1.0/24
LAN2: 192.168.2.0/24

host1: 192.168.1.2
host2: 192.168.2.18

LAN2 is a virtual network where my pfSense server and host (both Virtual Machines) resides in and the pfSense server is acting as the DHCP server and default gateway in this network. This makes LAN1 the "WAN" network of pfSense. I have a pass rule on SSH on the WAN interface to LAN2 so SSH connections are acccepted.

When I connect from host1 to host2, connections are dropped after more or less 60 seconds. Wireshark reports this the moment the connection is broken:

The same occurs when SSH:ing from host1 to the pfSense server (192.168.2.1), but not vice versa.

According to some other forums, I've read that this is caused by the same subnet mask i used (255.255.255.0), but it shouldn't matter as they are two different networks - One physical and one virtual. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

Derelict

Sounds like you have some asymmetric routing going on or something.

chippey5

Thanks for your reply. I read some posts saying the same thing. But my routing is set up like this:

LAN1
Destination IP: 192.168.2.0
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway IP Address: 192.168.1.10 (pfSense WAN IP)

LAN2
Destination IP: 192.168.1.0
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway IP Address: 192.168.1.1

The only thing I can see here that potentially could/should be changed is the gateway IP of the LAN1 route to point to 192.168.2.1 instead, but I'm not sure.

chippey5

Solved

It was a layer 8 issue - between the chair and the monitor. Static routing on LAN2 was incorrect. Reconfigured the static route (as per the settings in my previous reply) and connections are not dropping anymore.