Help with Multiple WAN setup.
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Just as a note, should I be opening all my ports on my router and setting its firewall to off and using only pfSense as the firewall and port forwarder?
When I set up any LAN rule for a port it doesn't seem to be working (i.e. I can't access HTTPS, FTP etc) What would be causing these ports to be blocked?
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Is there any guides in pfSense on what the most common ports are and how I should go about opening them for external and internal access
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Leimrod, I think you have some basic misunderstanding atm how the firewall of pfSense works. I'll try to sum it up a bit:
Firewallrules will always be applied to incoming traffic at an interface. This means if you allow access from lan to any that connections that have been initiated from lan will create a state that accepts trafic for the reverse connection of this traffic as well. No need to open something up at wan for this. You only need to open up ports and forward ports at WAN if you offer services to the public like hosting a webserver for example.
Now to your https problem: the default port for https is 443 (like noted in the webgui as well when selecting https). As your https destination uses a different port (8443) just duplicate the rule that you already have for https and change the destination port to 8443 to take care of this "special setting" as well.
It looks like you use some gatewayrouters in front of you. The easiest way to set them up and forget about them is to set the pfSense WAN IP and pfSense OPT-WAN IP as DMZ hosts in these routers (might also be called expedited host or similiar). This way they will just forard any traffic to the pfSense and you don't have to touch them anymore if you need to create rules and forwards for incoming traffic.
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Would it accomplish the same thing if I set up an alias in firewall and set it to ports 22, 443, 444, 3389, 8443? That way as I want to add ports I could just add them to the alias instead of creating a seperate rule for each port?
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This will work fine. Just use a portsalias. That's the mainreason behind the alias system, to reduce the amount of rules and make them more readable and allow easier editing.
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Would this work for getting access to external FTP servers also? If I just add port 21 into that alias should I get FTP access also?
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ftp is different and special as this protocol simply sucks. It needs an ftphelper through NAT and is not multiwan capable. ftp connections will run on the original WAN always. On top you have to add a rule at firewall>rules, lan tab on top of all your rules: "pass protocol any, source any, destination 127.0.0.1, gateway default" to exclude the traffic through the proxy from balancing.
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this is really getting frustrating now. I can't see any reason why FTP isn't working. I set up the LAN rule as you said, and i've enabled the FTP helper under "interfaces>WAN>FTP helper"
When you say set the destination to 127.0.0.1, should that be of type "network" and CIDR /24? Also you didn't mention, but where should I be opening the FTP port in this rule, at the source or the destination, or do I not need to?
I also have rules set up in in Firewall>NAT>Port forward and set it to autocreate rules in firewall>Rules>WAN, i've attached screenshots of these.
EDIT: I did a quick check in my "diagnostics>show states" and when I try to make an ftp connection i'm getting these errors
tcp 127.0.0.1:8021 <- 80.79.129.2:21 <- 192.165.0.30:2077 CLOSED:SYN_SENT
tcp 127.0.0.1:8021 <- 80.79.129.2:21 <- 192.165.0.30:2078 CLOSED:SYN_SENT
tcp 127.0.0.1:8021 <- 80.79.129.8:21 <- 192.165.0.30:2079 CLOSED:SYN_SENTDo you have any idea what could be causing this?
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ftphelper has to be enabled at interfaces>lan (it is by default) and not on interfaces>wan (this is only needed if you provide ftp services to the public). The rule to destination 127.0.0.1 (single host or alias) has to be created on top of the lan firewallrules.
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hoba, I have to thank you for your help with this.
I changed the rule to "single host or alias", do I need to change the port range anywhere to FTP? I've also attached a screenshot of my "Interfaces>LAN" tab to show that the ftphelper is enabled (its enabled when there ISNT a tick in the box right?)
So just so i'm clear, for FTP to work with load balancing. I need this LAN rule, FTP enabled at the LAN interface and also a rule in my NAT>Port forward for FTP, with "Auto-add a firewall rule" enabled. Is this correct?
I found this recent mail thread which seems to say that FTP does not work at all for load balancing in pfSense, has this since been changed?
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Your screenshots look ok now. Does it work? If not please upgrade to the latest snapshot. there was some ftp logic changed one day ago.
The mail just states that it can't make use of loadbalancing but it will work on multiwansetups using only WAN for ftp-ing.
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Ok that REALLY scared me. I updated to the latest firmware update and I lost all access to the internet, when I checked on the pfSense main page it was telling me it was using version 1.0.1 from the 29th October 2006. Lucky for me i'd kept a copy of the 28th February update, when I updated back to the original again I got internet access back.
I think there might be something wrong with the latest snapshot, it appears to be one of the original 1.0.1 releases rather than an update.
Also, and this is very weird, before I updated I couldn't get FTP access at all, now that i'm back using the same version as before I now have FTP access??? Nothing has changed, I just updated to the same version i've been using all along,
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You have to redo any load balancing queues after updating as the format has changed.
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You have to redo any load balancing queues after updating as the format has changed.
What do you mean? All my load balancing and firewall rules are still in place and the load balancing is still working, the "status>RRD Graphs" show that the traffic is still going out over both connections
EDIT: Also my HTTPs is working now as well? Very weird. Btw I have no rules set up in Firewall>NAT (neither portforward, 1:1 or outbound) for FTP or HTTPs is this normal? Also another thing i'm noticing, when i'm downloading just one torrent it is using BOTH WAN connections? I know this is happening because my download speed is over 6Mb/s, which is greater than either of the WAN connections on their own. I thought this wasn't possible?
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I have some homework for you. Search the forum and the available docs. This thread has already 5 pages and you are asking still questions that have already been covered in this thread or the docs that have been posted. No offense but the answers are all there already.
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I am, believe me, i've been searching and reading for the last week, i'm presently completely reading through faq.pfsense.com.
The thing is my problem obviously wasn't just a simple misplaced rule, I had everything in place and it wasn't working, its only working now after doing a firmware update of the same version i'm using now. Which is very odd. I'd like to troubleshoot this but I don't even know why it would not be working in the first place.
Either way, you have been more than helpful on this, the reason I posted so many screenshots was so that if anyone else runs into these problems, when they do a search they will find this thread and be able to see what changes to make. I have load balancing working now, and seem to have the hang of getting ports working thanks to your help.
If I have any further questions i'll do a lot more research first before I post any more threads so I can be a lot more specific about what problems i'm encountering.
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Leimrod, congrats! Lesser people would have given up 3 pages ago!
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Leimrod you made my day! I was struggling to get this multi WAN thing setup. I had results with the dual WAN but I have 3 DSLs now and am getting another 2 in the next few days. Went through your posts and lo, I am on a 3 DSL loadbalanced network and everything works. Now I will try to get my uTorrent to work but if it does not, I will put a direct link to it on one of my DSL routers and have it done ;-)
Thanks to all mods who helped Leimrod and indirectly helped everyone else :)