FTP client connections cant load balance?

[nigelhaslam]

Hey friends,

I'm new to pfsense, having successfully installed 1.2.3 with dual wan load balancing working well except for ftp.

I just bought the 'definitive guide' and found the following entry in chapter 7.8.1.1.1

"Ftp client connections will always use the primary WAN interface and cannot use any OPT WAN interfaces.  More information on this can be found in Chapter 11"

Well I've scoured chapter 11 and can't find any more information.

load balancing ftp uploads was our primary reason for getting a second ADSL account and I'm very disappointed to read the above.

Any suggestions or workarounds?

Cheers

Nigel
Australia

[mhab12]

I believe this is some kind of limitation of the FTP proxy application.  You might experiment with 2.0 as Squid (the HTTP proxy) had similar issues in 1.2.3 that, if I recall correctly, have been resolved in 2.0

[nigelhaslam]

Thanks mhab12,

It seems that ftp is old, insecure and frowned upon by today's network gurus, including the pfsense development team.  Unfortunately it is still very popular which makes it hard to avoid.

I found this page with a discussion on the subject and a few alternatives to ftp..

http://blog.pfsense.org/?p=212

..some of which, SFTP for instance, can be a simple as changing a setting in your ftp client.

This does, however, require the equivalent setting at the other end of the connection, which means you have to motivate your prospective file sharing partner to include the same setting (or possibly to implement a different server application).

Cheers

Nigel
Australia