Simple loadbalancing help
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Hi,
Firstly, Thanks to the PF team! it's given new life to a sad, ol' pc. :P
Let me be honest upfront, I have very little understanding of networking and network concepts…
Anyway, I've searched, and read up on most of the links on the forum about loadbalancing, but I get seem to get my head around it all. I've configured pfsense (1.0.1) to see both connections, and can ping out from the webc, but i can't seem to configure it for loadbalancing.
I've got 1 DSL (WAN/PPPoE) + 1 Cable (OPT1/DHCP), and I'm not sure how to set up the LB pools to handle it...All traffic is going out on WAN. I think my problem might with the IP/Monitor IP entries, i'm not entirely sure how to set that up. I did a trace route on both connections, and used the 2nd hop after the pfsense box for the monitor IP, and used the pfsense boxes' IP for the IP box. ???
Any help would be very much appreciated!
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Update to a recent snapshot from http://snapshots.pfsense.com/FreeBSD6/RELENG_1/updates/ and the Load balancing setup will be a LOT easier. It has been greatly simplified since 1.0.1.
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Thanks!
ALOT easier indeed. Everything makes sense now…sorta ::)
However, It's not Loadbalancing, so I'm guessing I missed something, as all traffic is going out on WAN. I started some heavy BT traffic, so I've got about 700 connections to test it out with, but the only thing going out of OPT1 are to check the link.
edit: yea, definitely not working as its supposed to. Disconnecting WAN causes me to lose the net entirely. maybe I messed with something, so I'll try setting back to defaults.
edit2: alright...Rebooted the box, and all of a sudden it started loadbalancing, rebooted it again, back to WAN... -
There's definately something messed up. I suggest starting over from scratch with a factory default config. Along with the gui changes some config.xml changes happened which might not work with your old config now.
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Ok, so I did a completely new install of pfsense, set up dual wan, but again its only using one connection. If i boot the the box with WAN unplugged, It'll use OPT1, plugging it back in, it continues to use OPT1 until I reboot. I set up my DSL with DHCP from modem, but it still used one or the other.
So yea…I have no idea whats going on. One thing I noticed is that the link status under Status>Load Balancer never changes from online if I unplug either of the connections. I'm wondering if it could possibly be a hardware issue with one of the NICs?
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You probably have a monitor IP problem then.
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I should be able to ping out on both connections right?
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Yes, but you have to use different targets if you want to test or the old state will keep you on the connection where it was initially established, at least as long as the state exists. Rather try tracerouting to different targets (like google.com, yahoo.com, slashdot.org,…). You should see the requests following different paths.
But if the loadbalancer doesn't detect linkchanges (like going down if you unplug an interface) your monitor IPs are not correct.
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Ok, I think I understand what your saying. I've got it setup properly so it sees if unplug either of the interfaces, but it still only uses WAN, even if that link is down, which also means its not load balancing at all.
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Then I'm out of ideas. It really should not be that complicated. :-\
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alright, I got it sorted out. Must be some funky hardware issue with one of my NICs. The box needs to boot with a certain interface unplugged, then plugging it in after it boots causes pfsense to allow outbound traffic on it.
Thanks to hoba and sullrich for the assistance!
Edit: Scratch the above. It DID work, only once tho. However, I found something I find strange…Using the ping utility in pfsense, regardless of the connection selected, it will ping out...normal right? other than the minor fact that only one connection is plugged in. :o This is something new for me, as before it would just time out on its non preferred connection.
Edit2: ok...so, it DOES work after all. Not sure what I did, but its working...pretty well at that. The result, well, I've got about 20 or so flashing LED's now...
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Only traffic running through the pfSense will be balanced. The pfSense itself will always only use the default gateway or what's in the routing table.