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    Broadcast storm

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Routing and Multi WAN
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    • S
      snvdberg
      last edited by

      Hello everyone,

      I have the following problem:
      I want to use another gateway for one host. As soon as I add a firewall rule in the LAN interface from the specific host to any with gateway the other gateway a broadcast storm appears.

      The lab environment is as follows:
      Gateway 1 and 2 are connected to the wan trough wan interface
      There is a DMZ network between Gateway 1, 2 and pfsense
      Pfsense is connected to lan
      No NAT is used between pfsense and gateway 1, 2 (nat is completely disabled)

      As I stated, this is a lab environment and all these network are on one vlan, just different subnets. I know this is not best practice, and in production these networks are all in different vlans.
      But still it is weird as soon as I specify a gateway in one of the firewall rules (LAN interface) a broadcast storm occurs.

      Does anyone have a clue why this happens?

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      • H
        heper
        last edited by

        Why create multiple gateways on a single interface?
        Why create a gateway on lan? You generally dont

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        • S
          snvdberg
          last edited by

          @heper:

          Why create multiple gateways on a single interface?
          Why create a gateway on lan? You generally dont

          We have multiple types of gateways, like Pfsense, Fortigate and Sophos. They are all used for different purposes (like basic nat, site-to-site, and intrusion prevention). But it's also a license thing…
          I didn't create a gateway on the lan interface, I created the gateway on the DMZ interface and used this gateway in the lan rule to any.

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          • H
            heper
            last edited by

            Gateway 1 and 2 are connected to the wan trough wan interface
            There is a DMZ network between Gateway 1, 2 and pfsense
            Pfsense is connected to lan
            No NAT is used between pfsense and gateway 1, 2 (nat is completely disabled)

            above is not making a lot of sense for me, maybe others understand what you are trying to say/do.

            it would help if you draw up a schematic of the network; this with relevant info like subnetting/routes/gateways

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            • S
              snvdberg
              last edited by

              This is what I'm trying to do:

              172.16.1.1 use fortigate
              172.16.1.2 use sophos
              172.16.1.3 use cisco asa

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              • johnpozJ
                johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                last edited by

                Ok so use policy based routing..

                What is this broadcast storm your saying happens?

                An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                • S
                  snvdberg
                  last edited by

                  @johnpoz:

                  Ok so use policy based routing..

                  What is this broadcast storm your saying happens?

                  That's what I'm doing and after I create the firewall rule for policy based routing a broadcast storm occurs. It is like a cable is connected from and to the same switch, loop.

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                  • johnpozJ
                    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                    last edited by

                    Dude draw up your connections.. You mention vlans.. And what is the broadcast storm.. Where is is coming from, what is the broadcasts your seeing?

                    "and all these network are on one vlan,"

                    So your trying to run different L3 over the same L2 ???    Your saying pfsense wan and lan plug into the same switch on the same vlan?  Well yeah that is a freaking loop!!

                    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                    If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                    Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                    SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                    • H
                      heper
                      last edited by

                      what i make of it:
                      -DMZ is in an isolated subnet, no way to get to/from it
                      -fortigate & asa share the same ip adress
                      -all your gateways are inside the same subnet (= no go)

                      as @johnpoz said: need more info

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                      • M
                        mikeisfly
                        last edited by

                        Also looks like two of your gateways have the same IP address. You mention your gateways have a route (I'm assuming static) to your LAN, but does your LAN have a static route back? Did you manually assign each client their own gateway?  I'm assuming these are hooked up to different ISP'S or is this a completely isolated network? So your static routes are using /32? Can we see your routing table? Like others network looks a little weird, but I'm sure their is a reason you have it wired this way? Do you have a dynamic routing protocol turned on? This can cause a broadcast storm if you have multiple paths to the same network.

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                        • S
                          snvdberg
                          last edited by

                          @johnpoz:

                          Dude draw up your connections.. You mention vlans.. And what is the broadcast storm.. Where is is coming from, what is the broadcasts your seeing?

                          "and all these network are on one vlan,"

                          So your trying to run different L3 over the same L2 ???    Your saying pfsense wan and lan plug into the same switch on the same vlan?  Well yeah that is a freaking loop!!

                          A router shouldn't forward broadcasts between interfaces. That's what the interface bridging is for. I can't see where the broadcast storm is from.

                          Here is a new picture with the connections. Just to be clear, I know it's not best practice to put the interfaces in the same vlan but that was just for this lab environment.

                          I'll reproduce it again in the lab environment and debug where the broadcast is from, not sure if it's layer 2 or 3 broacast. If it's a layer 3 broadcast it might be explainable. But still weird it only happens after I change the gateway for the default rule.

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                          • S
                            snvdberg
                            last edited by

                            @heper:

                            what i make of it:
                            -DMZ is in an isolated subnet, no way to get to/from it
                            -fortigate & asa share the same ip adress
                            -all your gateways are inside the same subnet (= no go)

                            as @johnpoz said: need more info

                            You're right, I messed up the drawing a bit. (Reality and lab mixed in this drawing haha)
                            About the gateway thing… why not have multiple gateways inside same subnet?

                            new drawing:

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                            • S
                              snvdberg
                              last edited by

                              @mikeisfly:

                              Also looks like two of your gateways have the same IP address. You mention your gateways have a route (I'm assuming static) to your LAN, but does your LAN have a static route back? Did you manually assign each client their own gateway?  I'm assuming these are hooked up to different ISP'S or is this a completely isolated network? So your static routes are using /32? Can we see your routing table? Like others network looks a little weird, but I'm sure their is a reason you have it wired this way? Do you have a dynamic routing protocol turned on? This can cause a broadcast storm if you have multiple paths to the same network.

                              Yes, drawing was messed up, added a new one in the post above. LAN doesn't need a static route back to the dmz, because it is in the direct connected network from the pfsense.
                              It is not a seperate ISP, all is one ISP, but we have a routed subnet so the external firewalls (fortigate, sophos cisco) have an external (routable) address and an internal address for the DMZ.
                              I didn't turn on anything like dynamic routing protocol, where is this located?

                              Edit:
                              if you mean with dynamic routing = RIP then no, it's not turned on.

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                              • johnpozJ
                                johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                last edited by

                                Dude that is such a BAD idea be it lab or not… Your running different layer 3 over the same layer 2.. And why are you using a /16 network that is just BAD practice as well.

                                Why not just get another switch?

                                Show how you have your gateways setup in pfsense..

                                An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                                • K
                                  kpa
                                  last edited by

                                  As it is set up now, you don't have any separation between LAN and DMZ because they are on the same switch effectively nullifying any firewalling you have on the pfSense.

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                                  • S
                                    snvdberg
                                    last edited by

                                    @johnpoz:

                                    Dude that is such a BAD idea be it lab or not… Your running different layer 3 over the same layer 2.. And why are you using a /16 network that is just BAD practice as well.

                                    Why not just get another switch?

                                    Show how you have your gateways setup in pfsense..

                                    Haha I know it's not a good idea, but a broadcast storm shouldn't happend either. Who / what says that /16 is bad practice? It is in RFC for private network ip range:  https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1918 it is very common. We need it for the internal address space, we have a lot of servers.

                                    It actually is 802.1q capable switch, but wanted to setup the lab fast so didn't configure it.

                                    Currently I'm not able to reach the lab enviroment. I'll show gateway setup as soon as I can.

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                                    • S
                                      snvdberg
                                      last edited by

                                      @kpa:

                                      As it is set up now, you don't have any separation between LAN and DMZ because they are on the same switch effectively nullifying any firewalling you have on the pfSense.

                                      Yes, but that is not the purpose of this post. And what is currently looks like even separting the switches do not have any effect if the broadcasts are being forwarded. But that is just speculation, I have to debug more to see what broadcasts are being forwarded.

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                                      • johnpozJ
                                        johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                        last edited by

                                        /16 has 65K hosts…  You have that many servers??  That is one freaking huge broadcast domain.. Nobody would ever have that many hosts on the same broadcast domain..  So 10 in the rfc1918 space a /8 -- you think its good idea to use a /8 mask on your interfaces..  You don't think that might have issues with overlap somewhere?

                                        It is bad practice to use an unrealistically large mask because of pure laziness yes..  Do you need that in a rfc somewhere to know its a bad idea??  And bad practice?

                                        An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                        If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                        Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                        SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                                        • S
                                          snvdberg
                                          last edited by

                                          @johnpoz:

                                          /16 has 65K hosts…  You have that many servers??  That is one freaking huge broadcast domain.. Nobody would ever have that many hosts on the same broadcast domain..  So 10 in the rfc1918 space a /8 -- you think its good idea to use a /8 mask on your interfaces..  You don't think that might have issues with overlap somewhere?

                                          It is bad practice to use an unrealistically large mask because of pure laziness yes..  Do you need that in a rfc somewhere to know its a bad idea??  And bad practice?

                                          True, current network is around 500 ip adresses. Thats also why im setting this up because we are going to split the subnets. It's not that I do not agree but was just curious if there is any best practice for subnet sizes.

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                                          • H
                                            heper
                                            last edited by

                                            i doubt there are any "official" rules, but imho, it's best to limit to /23 or  /22  (thats around 512/1024 available ip's)
                                            I have a /22 on a public wifi hotspot because i don't wish to run the same SSID on multiple vlans to split it up / it's not an ideal situation, but for sake of simplicity i keep it like that

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