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    Multi-WAN with 1 WAN interface and two gateways

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Routing and Multi WAN
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    • A
      awangatb00
      last edited by

      I have a pfsence server with 1 LAN, 1 OPT, and 1 WAN interface.  On the WAN side I have two different IP’s on the same subnet that lead to different ways out to the internet.  Here is what I have done so far.

      1. Added gateways for both gateway servers (gateway 1 and gateway 2)
      2. Created a routing group called “Outbound” with both gateways in it
      3. Changed my LAN firewall rule to have my Gateway set to “Outbound”

      While both gateways are up this pfsense server sends data to gateway 2 which is what I would expect as gateway 1 has a lot of data going through it already and the RTT is higher than gateway 2.  My issue is if gateway 2 reboots the clients on the LAN have everything stop working until gateway 2 comes up.  I would expect that when gateway 2 fails the pfsence server would go to gateway 1.  To give a little more specifics I will give you some IP’s to try to explain.

      Pfsence LAN – 172.16.1.1
      Pfsence WAN - 192.168.1.5
      Gateway 1 – 192.168.1.1
      Gateway 2 – 192.168.1.7

      One thing I have noticed is when I look under WAN under Interfaces I have a default gateway and it is not “Outbound”.  If I try to take out the gateway from the WAN interface all traffic stops.

      Anyone have any thoughts on what I might be able to do to fix this?

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      • C
        cmb
        last edited by

        Really need to keep it to one gateway per WAN, you create all kinds of routing and return routing complications otherwise. It's doable but a mess of floating rules, being careful with reply-to, really have to know what you're doing. Putting one of the gateways on a different NIC and subnet will make things easy.

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        • A
          awangatb00
          last edited by

          I do not have the NIC's to make that happen.  Any tips on reading up to make the 1 WAN two gateways work?

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          • C
            cmb
            last edited by

            There isn't any documentation on that. Short of learning everything about PF's route-to and reply-to. You're in for a ton of work. Even at that, it's not possible to fully address. Put in a small VLAN-capable switch and save yourself a huge amount of trouble.

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