[SOLVED - almost!] Unusual setup with Load Balancing, will it work?

[dmwizzard]

Hi there,

I want to know if I'll be able to test/use load balancing with the set-up I'm testing… or will it simply not work like that?

Here's the test set up:

I've got an old box running XP on my network which I use to download stuff - it has three NICs installed:
NIC 1. GB lan to switch of LAN
NIC 2. 100 also to same switch of LAN
NIC 3. connected to it's own Router

I'm running PFSense 2.0 release via VMWare on this box and I'm trying to load balance these two routers to share bit torrent traffic.

My Question is: If I'm running VMWare and uTorrent on the same box will PFSense LB for me and so combine speeds for faster downloading… or will I have to connect to this box from other machine and run utorrent from that?

PFsense shows both GWs conntected but it doesn't seem to share the load, it just favours one GW all the time. I have followed the intrustions found on the forum, trying all sorts of configs to get this to work - No joy so far. So, I'm begining to think I can't be done like this :(

I would appreiate any help you guys, I've been at this for two days now LOL

Cheers, Peace.

[dmwizzard]

Ok, I've worked out what was going on here…

I needed realease the NICs from Windows so it still had control over them and my traffic wasn't going through PFsese at all!

Also, from the host LAN I've changed the Default Gateway and DNS server addresses to the LAN setup in VMWare and PFsense.
This seems to be the only way I can route my traffic to the VM and out the two WANs for Load Balancing.

Here's the setup now

Windows XP > VMWare WorkStation 8 > PFSense - Two WANs

Windows XP Network:
LAN of my Network - 192.168.122.* Router1 DHCP
Wan One              - 192.168.122.* Router1 DHCP
WAN Two            - 192.168.0.*    Router2 DHCP

VMWare Network: - Set to Bridge my 3 NICs as follows:
Main GigaBit NIC - VNET0
WAN NIC 1        - VNET1
WAN NIC 2        - VNET2

PFSense is all setup with Gateways connecting, Load Balancing and Firewall configured.

Now, The only way I can think of connecting the Hosts' IP Traffic in to the VM and so out of PFSense via the two WANs is to Manually configure my Host NIC like this:

Static IP Address Config of Host LAN card:
IP Address          - 192.168.122.200
SubNet                - 255.255.255.0
Default GateWay  - 192.168.122.66
DNS Server          - 192.168.122.66

It is all working and I'm able to Download via uTorrent through both the WANs at the same time - Doubling my transfere rate.
Also, I can connect any of my other networked Machines to route traffic by setting their Default Gateways and DNS Server IPs to this 192.168.122.66

However, My Question is - Is there a better way of getting my traffic in to the VM other than setting the Host NIC to the LAN IP address of PFSence???