Multi WAN Advice

[stuartc]

Hi Guys,

I've been reading around and I'm a bit lost.

I currently have 2 PFSense firewalls, one on each WAN link into the building both connecting to the same LAN. This is causing me issues when it comes to routing for example I have a number of servers some of which are pointing to the first PFsense box as their default gateway and some to the second - this was initially put together to spread badnwidth usage other the 2 lines for different service that were hosted.

As you can imagine servers pointing to PFSense1 for their default gateway cannot contact servers poiting at pfsense 2.

I'm guessing that the proper solution is to add an additional nic to one of the PFSense boxes and allow PFSense to load balance the WAN links. This being the case is it possible to have both boxes setup with dual WAN in a failover scenario?

Any help greatly appreciated

[XIII]

if you want load balance, as you say was the original reason for 2 pfs' use one system and follow the wiki to do load balance. the only other way ( i know) to fix the routing issue is to use carp (doesnt seem like this is the route you want though)

[Gob]

Agreed, add an extra nic in one of your pfS boxes to load balance your servers and resolve routing.
If you do want to make use of the second pfS box as a failover then use CARP to keep them both in sync. There are a few things to consider though…
You will need at least 4 nics in each pfSense box:
  1 x LAN
  2 x WAN
  1 x CARP pfsync
If you use a DMZ, that will need an additional NIC in each box.

You will need 3 useable public IP's on each WAN connection

the first part - connecting both WANs to one pfSense box is a no-brainer and you should do it. The CARP setup takes a bit of configuring but is well worth the effort if you have all of the required bits above.