How to setup 2 NIC Opnsense vmware transparent

[qball]

Hi all,

I am struggling to setup a 2 NIC opnsense VMWARE setup.  I'm running VMware Workstation in windows.

Firstly, I am not 100% sure what the network adapter settings must be in VMWARE - bridge/nat/host etc.  I am also confused with what my windows ip settings must be in order to get this to work.  Do I bridge the two NIC's in windows?

I have the desktop pc with 2 NIC as seen in attached diagram.  I want the WAN side to connect to adsl router 192.168.10.1.  I then want to run opnsense transparently so that I can shape traffic etc going to the wireless router 192.168.10.200.  the wireless router will then provide net access through opnsense to my clients.

PLEASE can someone help me as I am quite confused with the IP address and adapter setup.

I look forward to your response.

Kind regards,
Quintin

[qball]

Is anyone able to assist me please to understand the VMware network config and pc config for 2 nics?

[bartjsmit]

From the VMware perspective, you need both vNIC's to be bridged. All other instructions are in the OPNsense transparent bridge setup: https://wiki.opnsense.org/manual/how-tos/transparent_bridge.html

Note that this does not work with traffic shaping, which sort of defeats the purpose. You could set up the ISP router to be a modem only and do the NAT and shaping on OPNsense, depending on what your ISP kit supports.

Note that you would need to have the Windows machine running all the time for this to work. You may be better off with the free version of ESXi as your hypervisor. It will certainly leave more resources for OPNsense.

Do not bridge the NIC's in Windows. At best you by-pass OPNsense completely and at worst you'll get a broadcast storm.

Bart...

[qball]

Good day,

Thank you kindly for your reply.

If I may ask, why would it not work for traffic shaping?

What would my setup need to be should i want to run traffic shaping & caching proxy?

I have managed to get it working somewhat, however...when i create the bridge as per the transparent bridge tutorial it bombs and i no longer have access to the GUI.

If i set my adsl router to bridge mode must i create dialup in windows or opnsense?

Any advise would be welcome.

Regards,
Quintin

[bartjsmit]

Hi Quintin,

Sorry, I don't know why it doesn't work for traffic shaping. There's just a big warning in the first paragraph of the documentation to that effect.

If you set your ADSL router to bridge mode (RFC-1483) it will expect a PPPoE client to make the connection to your ISP. You should configure this on OPNsense to use its firewall.

You may not even want to configure an IP address on the WAN side of your Windows to ensure proper operation.

Bart...

[qball]

Thanks very much for the reply.

I set my router to bridge earlier, but when i follow the steps in the opnsense transparent bridge tutorial as SOON as i bridge WAN and LAN it throws me out of opensense gui and i cannot get back at all.  the bridge step is only step 4 i think it was out of 10....

i must be missing something.

[bartjsmit]

If your router is bridged, you should set up OPNsense as a router. Something has to do the NAT ;-)

Bart...

[qball]

i am still struggling with this as whenever i create the bridge opnsense is no longer accessible?

[bartjsmit]

Don't create the bridge 

Trendnet in bridge mode -> Windows WAN network stack with just the VMware Bridge Protocol on it -> OPNsense WAN interface with PPPoE and NAT -> Windows LAN network as normal with the VMware Bridge Protocol

Set your LAN machines to use the OPNsense LAN IP as the default gateway and confirm you can ping out.

Bart...