Dual Wan Newbie – Cable Modem and ADSL

sganarelle

Ok currently my pfSense firewall has 5 nics in it. Wan, Wan1, Lan, Lan1 and the DMZ. The default Wan nic is connected to the cable modem and it gets an IP address via DHCP. Now I want to setup Wan1 to get its connection to the internet from the ADSL which is PPPoE. I have enabled OPT1 as WAN1. I have seenon the General Setup page a spaces for the username and password for PPPoE. Should I make the ADSL connection WAN and the cable modem the WAN1 connection? Eventually I want all the traffic of Lan1 and the DMZ to go out the ADSL connection and all other traffic to be load balanced between the two connections.

Thanks

hoba

PPPoE only works at WAN, not at OPTx, so yes, you might weant to switch interfaces. DHCP is working at OPTx interfaces. However, if you want loadbalancing you need static gateways at your WANs. You can fake these by using simple Routers in front of your pfSense WANs and use these as gateways. Set the WAN IPs of the pfsenses as DMZ ips and you should be ready to roll.

However, policybased routing will work with dynamic WAN IPs if you don't need loadbalancing.

sganarelle

So to see if I understand the nuances of your answer essentially:
If policy based routing is good enough then I can have ADSL connected to the WAN interface and the cable modem connected to the OPT1 interface and then somewhere I setup the policy.

If i want policy based routing and load balancing i need to have my internet connections each connected to its own linksys router and from there connected to the pfSense box.

I will be going with just plain old policy based routing.

Thanks

hoba

Yep, you got it right.

sganarelle

I am beginning to feel adventurous and want to get my dual wan links working together. My setup is still 5 nics: Wan, Wan1, Lan, Lan1 and the DMZ.
WAN is ADSL and working fine (pppoe)
WAN1 is cable modem (dhcp)

I finally brought up the WAN1 interface. however the information concerning it after i brought it up doesnt look correct. The Status pages says its up BUT there is no IP address or subnet mask as well as no ISP DNS servers or gateway. I cant really have an internet connection without any of that information.

What did I do wrong?

sullrich

Do you see anything in the system logs pertaining to the interface and dhclient?

sganarelle

i am getting back to my firewall project. what is "next hop gateway (router) IP addres"?
i think that the answer is the IP address of either the aDSL or the cable modem. The gateway shown by the interfaces page for the aDSL is a 10.x.x.x and its ip is 70.x.x.x(the interface page also lists DNS servers, curiously it shows 192.168.1.1 which is the ip address of LAN, why?). For the cablem modem the interface page shows an ip address but no DNS servers.

i want Lan1 and the DMZ to be assigned to the aDSL connection and the Lan to be assigned to the cable modem. in the box that asks for "the next hop gateway (router) IP addres" what do i enter there?