How to get pfSense WAN to accept VLAN 0

natbart

Any help this forum could provide would be appreciated!!

I am new to pfSense and migrating away from a Ubiquiti Unifi USG3 as my Edge/Firewall device. I am on 1gb Fiber internet and have removed my HH3000 from the configuration and am connected to the Nokia ONT.

Currently (working):

Fiber -> SFP on Nokia ONT -> Nokia ONT DATA1 (RJ45) -> USG 3 WAN (Configuraed with VLAN 0) -> USG LAN 1-> Meraki Switch

Desired Goal:

Fiber -> SFP on Nokia ONT -> Nokia ONT DATA1 (RJ45) -> pfSense WAN (em0) -> pfSense LAN (em1) -> Meraki Switch

** pfSense is on a HW box with 2 physcical Intel NIC recognized as Intel Pro 1000*

Running WireShark on a laptop connected to ONT (get IP and works directly connected no problem), I see that the Ingress packets are 802.1q tagged with VLAN 0.

Any thoughts on how I can make this work when pfSense does not allow me to configure WAN as VLAN 0??

fresnoboy

@natbart ,

Are you on AT&T internet, or a different fiber provider?

If you ran pfsense on a ESXi host as a VM, it's easy to have vmware handle the VLAN 0 issue for you.

natbart

@fresnoboy I am on another provider in Canada - Bell MTS.

I might try VMware but was hoping to avoid the extra complexity of adding VMware to the mix. My HW is vmware capable but only 4gb memory right now.

natbart

Some more digging indicates Netgraph maybe be able to accomplish what I need to do. A portion of pfatt (https://awesomeopensource.com/project/aus/pfatt or https://github.com/MonkWho/pfatt/tree/faa80d09f9c00e4a67bc3cacf2eab5a1631ec3f9) an ATT By-pass seems to tag traffic in & out with VLAN0. I am no Free BSD expert or have any familiarity with Netgraph.

Anyone familiar with this? Or used this before?

stephenw10

Yes, you would need to use netgraph to do that in pfSense. You cannot create a VLAN with VID 0 in pfSense/FreeBSD directly.

Steve

JKnott

@natbart said in How to get pfSense WAN to accept VLAN 0:

By-pass seems to tag traffic in & out with VLAN0

I trust you realize VLAN0 only adds the priority tag and does not result in a separate VLAN.

"The reserved value 0x000 indicates that the frame does not carry a VLAN ID; in this case, the 802.1Q tag specifies only a priority (in PCP and DEI fields) and is referred to as a priority tag."

natbart

@JKnott & @stephenw10 thanks.

Just looking for some resources or guidance. VLAN 0 seems to be only way for me to connect to ONT and grab a DHCP address.

Totally get that it is not creating a new VLAN. Just trying to get pfSense to work with my service provider’s configuration.

Not sure why some service providers like mine and ATT chose this design.

stephenw10

Yup, exactly. There's no way to do that in pfSense though AFAIK.

Also I believe some equipment still recognizes that as a VLAN even if it's outside the spec.

Steve

stephenw10

The cynic in me suspects they deliberately chose that because it's outside the spec which forces people to use their equipment.

johnpoz

Setting vlan id 0 would be when you want to set priority, but not use a vlan - if I recall..

edit: ah jknott bet me too it ;)

But also with steve - they prob do that on purpose as well, not all equipment will support doing that, especially "home" based gear..

natbart

Super frustrating! My Ubiquiti USG3 let me do it and then I got some great hardware (super excited) and got started on pfSense only to be stopped dead in my tracks because of this.

Want to get rid of the under powered USG3 but sinking hours into trying to understand how to get pfSense to work in this configuration is killing me.

The netgraph option sounds doable but it currently beyond my skill set and taking lots to wrap my head around what is required to get it implemented.

JKnott

@johnpoz

I can understand that some hardware doesn't support it properly, but that's no reason why pfsense shouldn't.

stephenw10

I don't think you can do it freebsd unless I'm using the wrong incantation.

You can apply a priority tag to a vlan but you can't create a zero tagged vlan to apply it to.

@natbart Does your provider actually require a priority tag?

Steve

johnpoz

@jknott said in How to get pfSense WAN to accept VLAN 0:

but that's no reason why pfsense shouldn't.

Well depends - does freebsd support it? I think people sometimes forget pfsense runs freebsd.. Just like the wireless support. Not really a pfsense thing, its a freebsd thing..

And to be honest.. It's not a real common thing to do - not like a million users out there screaming I need to be able to set vlan 0 ;)

Looking to what unifi does, seems for some ATT bypass - the classic UI allows you to set it - most likely because they just didn't set restrictions.. But new UI of the controller seems to..

https://community.ui.com/questions/Using-VLAN-0-for-WAN-with-new-interface/fe455db8-0d3f-4fa4-8d27-0ee337d2cefe?page=0

btw.. In 30 some years I don't recall ever having to set this ever ;)

JKnott

@johnpoz said in How to get pfSense WAN to accept VLAN 0:

not like a million users out there screaming I need to be able to set vlan 0

What's that noise I hear?

IIRC, I was able to set it in Linux. My understanding for using it is to provide priority on the main LAN, but I don't know that you could have both tagged and untagged on the same LAN. I agree there's not a lot of call for it.

natbart

@stephenw10 not sure what to say... I am told it works on FreeBSD with Netgraph.

ATT users need to do this also to bypass their GATEWAY box. Their are definitely implementations or designs that require it.

Some users maybe just gave up and moved to other hardware that could accomplish it.

Wireshark shows packets tagged 802.1q with VLAN0 when my laptop was connected.

natbart

I’m just a guy interested in pfSense and not wanting to use Service Provider gateway (HH3000).

I guess I posted here hoping someone might have more experience with this scenario or problem.

I appreciate the dialog so far and hope maybe there is some solution that will make this work.

fresnoboy

@natbart

I do this with my AT&T fiber connection to get rid of the POS AT&T gateway.

BTW, another technique to deal with this VLAN0 silliness is to use a cheap switch to strip the VLAN0 from the WAN connection like the Netgear GS108Ev3 . The AT&T bypass thread here: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/99190/att-uverse-rg-bypass-0-2-btc/328 has all sorts of info on dealing with the VLAN0 problem that AT&T Fiber users have to deal with.

stephenw10

There are some providers who require a priority tag on WAN but I've never seen that without a, valid, vlan tag.

Steve

natbart

@fresnoboy said in How to get pfSense WAN to accept VLAN 0:

Netgear GS108Ev3

I will continue to read the ATT bypass solutions. My service provider does not have all the WPA supplicant / certificate requirements that ATT users have, so was trying to distinguish the required element from that fix.

I have thought about putting a switch in the mix, but a Netgear GS108 is another $75 CDN on Amazon and adds another layer to the solution as well as cost.

What requirements does the switch need to solve my problem? Does it make more sense to throw on VMware and at least deal with one piece of hardware.