This is a PaloAlto FW.  So all we wanted to do is create two paths to the 
firewall with a deterministic path to and from a user subnet to the server dmz, 
with failover handled by OSPF on the routed side and VRRP on the user side.  I 
guess its a pipe dream without introducing a lot of additional configuration.  
Does anyone know if I take the FW out of the OSPF equation by creating static 
routes in the cores to the networks behind the firewall would the firewall then 
adhere to the placing the outbound user session on the inbound port that 
originated it.  I know then a single default route would have to be named in 
the FW for any sessions originating from behind the firewall but that is few 
and far between.
 
thanks again 
walt 

>>> "D'Estienne, Michael" <Michael.D'[email protected]> 6/21/2011 7:23 PM >>>
hey walt,
1) the fw by default will look at its routing table to determine where to send 
the packet, irrelevant to which interface the conversation entered the fw.
2) you can't force this via ospf 
3) try to see if policy based routing is supported in your fw, this may work 
for you.

i don't know which vendor's fw you're using but ecmp over multiple interfaces 
usually isn't supported in a fw, probably due to what you're experiencing, 
among other things.  typically, what is supported are multiple next hops for a 
subnet via the same physical interface.





Michael d' Estienne
IT Specialist, Enterprise Operations
Office of the Chief Information Officer
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Department of Homeland Security
Tel: (202) 732-2329
mobile: (202) 507-1733
[email protected]
ICE Service Desk: (888) 347-7762 or via web https://servicedesk.ice.dhs.gov
________________________________________
From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Walter Witkowski
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2011 11:11 AM
To: Enterasys Customer Mailing List
Subject: [enterasys] Asymmetric Routing

Hi all,

Have a question.  We have a firewall that is participating in OSPF with two 
cores (S4's).  The firewall has a dmz port C, port A is connected to a port on 
Core1, port B is connected to Core2.  The user vlan is connected to both cores 
with VRRP running.  When initiating an SSH session to a dmz server we see the 
SSH request come into port A of the firewall which is the shortest path from 
user to server.  The response intermittently will come out of port B of the 
firewall.  The path cost from the server back to the user is equal cost.  We 
are experiencing intermittent connectivity issues to these servers behind the 
firewall, not only SSH.  Nowhere else on the network are we having issues when 
the error occur.  So far today with port B of the firewall disconnected we have 
not seen an issue.  

If we elevate the path cost on one link then all returning traffic will use 
that exit port but then we will lose our attempt to load balance by creating 
multiple return paths.  

My question(s) 
1)  shouldn't the fw send the response out the same port (A) that the request 
came in on?? 
2)  eventually we wanted to use vrrp to load balance traffic across the cores 
which would mean that server requests would come into both port A and B of the 
firewall.  We would like the firewall to adhere to that load balancing by 
returning traffic back on the same link.  Is there a way to force this using 
OSPF?.  
3) is there another answer for doing this? 

thanks in advance
walt
* --To unsubscribe from enterasys, send email to [email protected] with the 
body: unsubscribe enterasys Michael.D'[email protected] 

---
To unsubscribe from enterasys, send email to [email protected] with the body: 
unsubscribe enterasys [email protected]

---
To unsubscribe from enterasys, send email to [email protected] with the body: 
unsubscribe enterasys [email protected]

Reply via email to