pfSense / StrongVPN / OpenVPN Oddity
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With apologies in the event that this topic has already been covered off. I am very technical, but am new to pfSense.
I have built a pfSense appliance on an old PC, with the intent of using it as a dedicated OpenVPN connection that will sit right between my cable modem and primary router.
To get everything set up, I plugged the WAN side of my appliance into an output on the router, and the LAN directly into a laptop. Everything works fine. Via the laptop, I can connect to the web console of the appliance, and can also access external sites.
Then, I changed the connections, so that WAN on the appliance was connected to the output of the cable modem, and LAN was input into the same router. I then attempted to connect to external sites via my main PC, which is connected to the router. I can't get anywhere.
I need to be judicious about when I interrupt the internet in our house, so I haven't yet had a chance to review logs and things. But, is there something simple that I'm missing? Admittedly, I've switched the applicance WAN from a private address to a public one. I'd be grateful for any pointers. Thanks! :-)
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@auntsteve
Assuming that you didn't bridge pfSense, have you also reconfigured the routes WAN side interface, IP and gateway (pfSense LAN IP)? -
@viragomann I didn't make any changes, but that is just based on my assumption that it would use DHCP on the WAN side. Thus, I was hoping that the change of the input address would not matter.
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@auntsteve
DHCP also enabled on pfSense? -
Cable modem locked to the MAC of the old router?
Subnet conflict?
I would initially connect the cable modem (after rebooting it) to the pfSense WAN and the laptop to the LAN before introducing the other router.
Steve
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Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I haven't had much opportunity yet to dig into this, but will be this weekend. As a first step, I'm going to try moving the WAN connection from an output on the router to the output from the cable modem. Then, I'm going to connect my laptop to the LAN port, and confirm that I can log onto the local web portal. I'll check out DNS settings and attempt to access external sites. If that works, then I'll swap the LAN connection over to the input on the router, and see what happens. :-)
