PFSENSE MULTI WAN LOAD BALANCING WITH FAIL OVER

 In this tutorial I will be show you how to configure a WAN Load Balancing and Failover server using PFsense 2.xx

My Network Diagram:

Requirements: PFsense v2 with 4 network adapter, 2 Internet Connection

1. Load Balacing Configuration

Configuring the network Interfaces. Go to Interfaces> click WAN and change the WAN name to WAN1, then set the IP address to 172.16.1.1/24

Make sure you set a gateway on this interface

To add a gateway on WAN1, below on IP Address there is a small

“add new one” click on it, and set your gateway to 172.16.1.254 which is the IP address of your Modem1

Do the same thing to WAN2

Set the IP Address to 172.16.10.1/24

Gateway 172.16.10.254

For LAN, set the IP address to 192.168.1.1/24 and note: in this case do not set any gateway

Make sure to un-check the “block private networks” and “block bogon networks”

For Wireless Interface

Set IP Address to 192.168.10.1

Also no gateway on this interface

Now we need to add two different DNS server, one pointing to WAN1 and the other one to WAN2, in our example below we use googleDNS for WAN1 and openDNS to WAN2

Go to System > General Setup

Next we need to edit the monitor IP address for each gateway

Go to System > Routing

On WAN1 set the Monitor IP to googleDNS – 8.8.8.8

On WAN2 set the Monitor IP to openDNS – 208.67.222.222

Monitor IP is the “always up” server from the internet that allow to response ICMP packet

Next we need to create a group for each connection

Go to System > Routing > Groups

Click the (+) button, set the group name to “LoadBalance”

Also set the gateway priority to same tier, just select “Tier1” to each gateway, on Trigger Level set to “Packet Loss or High Latency” and you can set the description anything you want. Press Save to save our configuration.

Next we need to create another group call “Failover1” if WAN1 fail then it will go automatically to WAN2

Set the group name to “Failover1” also set the gateway priority to different tier, select “Tier1” for gateway1, and “Tier2” for gateway2, on Trigger Level set to “Packet Loss” and again you can set the description anything you want. Press Save to save our configuration.

Again, we need to create another group call “Failover2” in this case if WAN2 fail then it will go automatically to WAN1

Set the group name to “Failover2” also set the gateway priority to different tier, select “Tier2” for gateway1, and “Tier1” for gateway2, on Trigger Level set to “Packet Loss” and again you can set the description anything you want. Press Save to save our configuration.

The configuration should look like this

To make all this configuration work, we need to apply it to our firewall rule

Go to Firewall > Rules

Select LAN tab, click on (+) button to add a new rule

Set Protocol to – Any

Source to – LAN Subnet

Description to – Anything you want

Leave the other settings to default

And in the “Advance features” set the Gateway to – LoadBalance, that is the group we just created

Just click Save to save the configuration

Next we need to create another rule for “Failover1” and “Failover2”

“Failover1”

“Failover2”

Now it’s done, to test the failover unplug your modem1 it should automatically redirect to your second connection.

Note:

Below Rules are optional if you want to add WiFi router separately with separate ip and subnet.

On Wireless rule we do the same configuration, just go to “Wireless” Tab

Wireless LoadBalance Rule

Wireless Failover1 Rule

Wireless Failover2 Rule repeat same step as failover2 in gateway.

Now we will configure the DHCP server for LAN and Wireless adapter

Go to Services > DHCP server

Click on “LAN” Tab

Set the IP range from 192.168.1.101 to 192.168.1.130 this range allow 30 dhcp users in LAN network

DHCP range for LAN

Do the same thing on the “Wireless” Tab

DHCP range for Wireless

We also need to configure the DHCP forwarder.

Go to Services > DHCP forwarder

Note: You need to disable DHCP server on your wireless access point in order to user our DHCP