VMWARE 5.1 ESXi routing

[Carl_66757]

Hi. I am using vmware 5.1.0 esxi and have 3 Ethernet adapters, one is WAN "vmnic 1" which is fed by a cableone modem and is in bridge mode, and the "vmnic 0" is LAN, I recently just added "vmnic 2" to the same Vswitch hoping to split the subnet, Im using Pfsense on a VM to route and my main wifi and ethernet network is on "vmnic 0" IP 192.173.1.0/24.
I added the other adapter to the Vswitch hoping that I can split the subnet into both adapters, I have 2 cheap wifi routers, and figured I could use them. each has 4 ethernet ports and I have 6 machines and I have a wireless antenna feeding some neighbors. I wanted to connect my other machines onto the same subnet, but it seams vmware is assigning a different subnet to my new adapter?

how can I get both adapters on the same subnet, i linked a picture to show, I understand that if I would get a bigger switch with more ports, that it would solve my problem, but I want to use what I have lol
https://photos.app.goo.gl/WAZXqsFppsQT1mvI3

 

[abailey]

I do not know of a way to make it work like you have it set. I don't think you can bridge at the vSwitch. I could be wrong but I have never seen that. I have always seen the use of multiple Nics in the same vSwitch as connecting to the same physical switch or switch stack (for redundancy or greater throughput).
If you don't want to add a physical switch then the only way I know to do what you want would be to add another vSwitch and port group and then assign a second virtual nic from pfSense to that new port group and vswitch. Then inside pFsense bridge the new interface to your existing interface.
This way pFsense is doing the bridging and not ESXI.

 

[abailey]

You could try to turn on Promiscuous mode on your vSwitch and see if that will make it work the way you have it set up, but I really don't think that will get it.

 

[Carl_66757]

That is What I ended up doing, just seams I have a firewall rule in pfsense that isn't letting both lans talk to each other, both lan interfaces have internet and I added a rule to any on LAN2 on pfsense, Im fairly new to this and enjoy learning but...... so I have 2 lans and one pc 192.173.1.20 and on LAN2 a pc is 192.173.0.5 both on same subnet mask, 255.255.255.0 and both can ping host "pfsense" but not each other, so I continuous ping and looked for it in firewall logs to add a easy rule and then change it to what i need, but nothing shows up????

I don't need both to communicate but now its a learning thing, I want to know why its not working lol

 

[failboat]

That is What I ended up doing, just seams I have a firewall rule in pfsense that isn't letting both lans talk to each other, both lan interfaces have internet and I added a rule to any on LAN2 on pfsense, Im fairly new to this and enjoy learning but...... so I have 2 lans and one pc 192.173.1.20 and on LAN2 a pc is 192.173.0.5 both on same subnet mask, 255.255.255.0 and both can ping host "pfsense" but not each other, so I continuous ping and looked for it in firewall logs to add a easy rule and then change it to what i need, but nothing shows up????

I don't need both to communicate but now its a learning thing, I want to know why its not working lol

I would keep looking at how to do it. This is a basic feature and easy to do in Proxmox. It's likely easy to do in ESXi. A virtual switch should have no problem with hardware and software NICs.

How is your 2nd adapter getting a separate subnet? If you didn't configure this in pfsense then you may have 2 dhcp servers turned on or you have static ips setup. If it was on it's own bridge it would just get no ip address, because the DHCP in pfsense is only configured for the 1 bridge. Before plugging your wireless routers in, they should be configured to WAP mode. Make sure they aren't dishing ips.

 

[abailey]

That is What I ended up doing, just seams I have a firewall rule in pfsense that isn't letting both lans talk to each other, both lan interfaces have internet and I added a rule to any on LAN2 on pfsense, Im fairly new to this and enjoy learning but...... so I have 2 lans and one pc 192.173.1.20 and on LAN2 a pc is 192.173.0.5 both on same subnet mask, 255.255.255.0 and both can ping host "pfsense" but not each other, so I continuous ping and looked for it in firewall logs to add a easy rule and then change it to what i need, but nothing shows up????
I don't need both to communicate but now its a learning thing, I want to know why its not working lol

It would help if you could post screenshots or draw out your network. I am having a hard time picturing it. In your first post it seemed you wanted everything on one network (subnet) no matter which of the two internal nics were used. Now, from this post, it looks like you have two networks 192.173.1 and 192.173.0. I did not realize until just now that you were using 192.173. I don't think this is a private address which means you could have all sorts of problems trying to use it on an internal network. Personally I would use a network in the 192.168.0.0/16 address space or the 10.0.0.0/8 address space somewhere. Another one would be the 172.16.0.0/12 but it is a little more difficult to use unless you have a real good grasp of IPV4.

 

[failboat]

That is What I ended up doing, just seams I have a firewall rule in pfsense that isn't letting both lans talk to each other, both lan interfaces have internet and I added a rule to any on LAN2 on pfsense, Im fairly new to this and enjoy learning but...... so I have 2 lans and one pc 192.173.1.20 and on LAN2 a pc is 192.173.0.5 both on same subnet mask, 255.255.255.0 and both can ping host "pfsense" but not each other, so I continuous ping and looked for it in firewall logs to add a easy rule and then change it to what i need, but nothing shows up????
I don't need both to communicate but now its a learning thing, I want to know why its not working lol

It would help if you could post screenshots or draw out your network. I am having a hard time picturing it. In your first post it seemed you wanted everything on one network (subnet) no matter which of the two internal nics were used. Now, from this post, it looks like you have two networks 192.173.1 and 192.173.0. I did not realize until just now that you were using 192.173. I don't think this is a private address which means you could have all sorts of problems trying to use it on an internal network. Personally I would use a network in the 192.168.0.0/16 address space or the 10.0.0.0/8 address space somewhere. Another one would be the 172.16.0.0/12 but it is a little more difficult to use unless you have a real good grasp of IPV4.

If you're getting public ips then pfsense isn't setup correctly or the bridges are setup wrong. You might have all your NICs on the same bridge and the ISPs DHCP is dishing out all your ips. At least one should be separate for the WAN.

Can you confirm the IPs you listed or were they just typos?

 

[Carl_66757]

I have got it fixed, but My WAN is 69.92.138.29, being my cable modem is in bridge mode and Pfsense obtains the WAN IP, and I have a subnet of 192.173.1.0/24 on LAN and another subnet of 192.173.0.0/24 on LAN2, basically I was needing more ethernet ports so I tried making it through first ESXI and then Pfsense, but I just connected the 2 switches together to get enough ports. the second one is feeding my wireless bridges to other peoples houses.
I needed to get everything back up and running so thats what i done.

but as for having 2 or more interfaces communicating, other than the WAN, I will jack with that later, as long as they are on the same subnet mask the Pfsense should be able to let each communicate to each subnet, as I understand, even tho they are 2 different networks.

 

[Carl_66757]

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NAwbixHtjQmCwMrt2

this is my network layout right now