Multiple subnet single nic

nicko

Hi,

First of all i've been using pfsense more than a year now and it rocks. Now, i'm going to use it as a balancer and need help on my situation.

I have 2 nic's (lan, wan):

lan (realtek) -> 192.168.0.1/24
wan (3com) -> 172.16.38.1/32
-> 172.16.39.1/32
-> 172.16.40.1/32

First of all I cannot configure the multiple ip (different subnets) on then wan side (yes, it's possible w/ vlan) but my switch has no vlan. What I want to do is balance 172.16.38.1 and 172.16.39.1. 172.16.40.1 is a dedicated line w/c is not for internet usage (private leased line). I've seen the docs online and all samples are based on physical nic's. My motherboard has only 2 nic's max. Purchasing managed switch is not an option for now.

I tried to add virtual ip's (but the ip needs to be on the same block). I can configure the routers to change their ip's to /24 for example:

wan -> 172.16.38.1/24

Then add static routes and manually assign the routes but I cannot do load balancing in that scenario.

Is vlan and purchasing a managed switch the only option on my scenario?

I have tried this on Linux and it's possible and already tried load-balancing with it (with Julian patches).

GruensFroeschli

From your description i don't think it's possible to do in the GUI.
However if you're willing to do some manual editing of the config this should be doable.

1: Configure multiple IP's on the WAN.
http://doc.pfsense.org/multiple-subnets-one-interface-pfsense.pdf

2: Follow the multiWAN doc
http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Multi-WAN_Version_1.2.x

3: Download, after create under point 2 a dummy pool, the config.xml. (Diagnostics –> Backup/Restore)

4: Open the downloaded config.xml with a texteditor and look for the dummy-pool you created.
It should look something like this:

<load_balancer><lbpool><type>gateway</type>
<behaviour>balance</behaviour>
<monitorip>81.221.250.10</monitorip>
<name>balancer</name>
<desc>test</desc>

<servers>192.168.20.2|81.221.250.10</servers>
<servers>192.168.20.3|81.221.252.10</servers>
<servers>192.168.20.4|67.208.222.222</servers></lbpool></load_balancer>

You can modify the <servers>entries to whatever you want (copy paste for more entries).

5: Restore the modified config to the pfSense.</servers>

nicko

Thanks

It's a bit tricky I think I'll just buy a cheap managed switches :). But I've read somewhere this is possible in 2.0

I'll try this at the moment.

GruensFroeschli

It's not "that" complicated :)
(In fact it's closer to how the balancer was to be configured in the previous versions… just not with an editor and directly in the config ^^" )
I found an old post of me with a screenshots of such a setup:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,9422.msg53290.html#msg53290

If you're going with VLANs: It doesn't have to be a fullblown manageable switch.
Just 802.1Q support is enough.