Book Image

Learn pfSense 2.4

By : David Zientara
Book Image

Learn pfSense 2.4

By: David Zientara

Overview of this book

As computer networks become ubiquitous, it has become increasingly important to both secure and optimize our networks. pfSense, an open-source router/firewall, provides an easy, cost-effective way of achieving this – and this book explains how to install and configure pfSense in such a way that even a networking beginner can successfully deploy and use pfSense. This book begins by covering networking fundamentals, deployment scenarios, and hardware sizing guidelines, as well as how to install pfSense. The book then covers configuration of basic services such as DHCP, DNS, and captive portal and VLAN configuration. Careful consideration is given to the core firewall functionality of pfSense, and how to set up firewall rules and traffic shaping. Finally, the book covers the basics of VPNs, multi-WAN setups, routing and bridging, and how to perform diagnostics and troubleshooting on a network.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Troubleshooting

Multi-WAN gateway groups are not difficult to add and configure, but you may nevertheless have to troubleshoot such a setup. If you do, there are several problems you are likely to encounter:

  • You may encounter a connectivity issue with your primary or secondary connection
  • You may encounter a misconfiguration in your setup
  • You may encounter a situtation where pfSense thinks a gateway is up when it is actually down, or vice-versa

The first point seems fairly obvious—that connectivity issues may cause problems with multi-WAN setups—but you will want to make sure that both (or all, if you have more than two connections) connections are working, independent of the gateway group. If the secondary connection represents a low percentage of our overall bandwidth, or if it is part of a failure group and therefore is inactive as long as the primary connection...