Comprehensive Guide to pfSense 2.3 Part 6: DHCP Server

[@cswboys]

Thank you thank you thank you!!! I have been watching your video's for some time now and think they are great! I literally laughed out loud today when I was nerfing a new pfSense install and this video fixed all my issues with you mentioning leaving the "client Identifier" option alone! I broke the DHCP service and had random DHCP leases expiring on me! I took some time away... watched the video and got myself back up and running!!! Cant thank you enough for your quality videos!

[@patrik5123]

Thanks for making this series. I find it incredibly useful since I'm just starting to get into pfsense. Please keep it up!

[@dennisdavis4420]

I really enjoyed watching this video. Well spoken and lots of details. Just what I was looking for. Subscribed!

[@epd807]

Mark, Excellent series! As I said before, the best I've seen on YT! Thank you again for taking the time to make them! eric

[@darryllawler2777]

Can't get these fast enough. Love this series. Hoping for a guide covering OpenVPN and how to configure it for only specific hosts. Also, routing specific traffic from specific hosts through a Squid proxy and having that traffic routed through the OpenVPN interface.

[@tanveerahmed1274]

Great series. very informative. Waiting for the next part.

[@TorbayTech]

Mark - thanks so much for this. Really helpful guide, and enjoying the rest of your good stuff too.

[@johnmather275]

Great guide Mark. On your video, where you are talking about lease time, and you noted it was 24 hours, and then you noted on the screen that you "cant tell time, and its only good for two hours". Well your still wrong, I think its 26 hours, you forgot to look at the day too. LOL Keep the Guides coming I am a true believer of PFsense software.

[@firebird7878]

A common DHCP boot option would be 66 for SIP phones and 150 for Cisco VoIP phones.

[@peterfixit7221]

+Mark Furneaux can you do a video on network bridging, for example using multiple 4 port nics to use as a switch

[@Boatsman99]

Mark, thank you for very informative video. Keep it up.

[@xavius30]

Mark, thanks for sharing the video. Any reason why you wouldn't go ahead and check the ARP Table Static Entry checkbox when setting a DHCP static mapping? You think the benefit would just be extra information added to the ARP table in case it was needed. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't see a negative to it.

[@letsgetsteve]

Sweet! Another great tutorial! I was very excited to see this up this morning. Any time frame on doing the overview on setting ports properly for Steam gaming and hoasting games? That is something I'm struggling with in the 2.3 layout. I guess I'm also having issues finding the antivirus HAVP? stuff too but the girls are getting restless not being able to host a Killing Floor match. First world problems I guess! LOL

[@TheMasterpulha]

please, continue this was an amazing series!

[@coldhardwick]

So, in other tutorials you mention a lot about squid. I haven't looked at your entire video catalog yet, so maybe you've covered it already. But it sounds interesting and I'd like to know more about it before I start my build! Of course, I'll be doing my own research, but if you could give me an overview, that'd be awesome!

[@sveinbjornkari]

I like these videos a lot. I am building my first PFsense box as i whats you're seres. Please keep up the good work.

[@sveinbjornkari]

I hert you talk about having your Wifi on a separated interface. Is it better to have your wifi on a dedicated port in the pfsense box or is it enough to give my access point a ip mapping.

[@ellins]

Thanks for the video series about pfSense. i have found them to be very informative. Could you please do a video out TFTP and how it works, and if possible a demo of how it work would be nice.

[@xxgg]

Excellent! I have been wait for your detailed guide videos! One thing I noticed? I can only map IP addresses which are Not with in the DHCP range?? Why? or I got something wrong?

[@TheUbuntuGuy]

+xxgg You cannot reserve addresses in the pool. If you want to know why, read this: doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Why_can't_I_have_static_mappings_inside_my_DHCP_range

[@xxgg]

+Mark Furneaux Another question, is there a way to map two mac addy to one IP? ex. Laptop with WiFi&LAN, so that whichever is used, i would get same IP?

[@TheUbuntuGuy]

xxgg That is illegal. What if both are connected at once? The best you can do is if you have different subnets and you map the same client portion of the address.

[@xxgg]

Oh? I didn't know it was illegal. I remember seeing someone asking same question and posted a picture from Tomato firmware settings, which had that option. Thank you for fast reply!

[@dandeatrich6338]

Wat da fk? That's not illegal.

[@lewisjsuk1]

Hi Mark, you mention under the DHCP leases overview page that any static mappings will show as offline if they're not connected and that's exactly what I'd expect, but all my static mappings always show online, irrespective if they're connected or not. Can you confirm if that behaviour is normal, or might I have configured something incorrectly, as I find this functionality not particularly useful. Thanks for a really great series of videos. Jamie

[@tiformar]

Hola mark nunca he utilizado pfsense y pretendo instalarlo en la oficina pero necesito utilizarlo como proxy con ldap windows 2003. Tienes algún video en el que expliques el procedimiento? Hi Mark, I have never used pfsense and I intend to install it in the office but I need to use it as a proxy server with ldap authentication windows 2003. Do you have any video explaining the process? tks

[@ramosel]

Thanks Mark, Damn, I was hoping 2.3 DHCP was more current or NOT ISC. I wish Electric Sheep would get with the Enterprise world (Cisco, Livingston, Foundry Hell, even DD-WRT) and use a DHCP service that allows static mapping within the pool address range. It just makes setup range and balancing a non-issue. I too use a lot of static mappings and have only recently gone to "deny" option. Many new home network devices (Dish Hopper, Samsung TVs, Nest, etc) will generate a MAC address other than the one published in their setup screens. I've seen in my logs these devices then get a separate IP address. For what reasons, I don't know. Inquiries to the vendors go unanswered. So, for now I just deny them. Looking forward to Part 7. Using DNS resolver for pfBlockerNG and DNSBL and would like to find a path forward to a full time VPN connection at the router level.

[@TheUbuntuGuy]

+ramosel The DHCP server in pfSense is the official ISC dhcpd variant. IIRC dd-wrt also uses dhcpd and thus has the same issue, but I don't think they care about warning you. It's just a limitation of the daemon.

[@ramosel]

***** yeah I'm just used to more robust (read corporate) DHCP where you can specify static clients within the DHCP pool addresses. Done all the time now for printers. Shame the plastic box lets you do it but the PC based software doesn't.

[@jeffwoerner3063]

Another very valuable video, thank you Mark! Question: I notice that on my Ubuntu boxes, the nslookup command reports it is contacting loopback 127.0.0.1 rather than the pfsense box I specified for DNS. Why is that? Again thank you for your efforts. After 30+ years in computing ... I never stop learning!

[@TheUbuntuGuy]

+Jeff Woerner That's because Ubuntu (at least the desktop variant anyways) uses NetworkManager. NetworkManager actually runs an instance of dnsmasq on your local computer! If you run "ps aux | grep dnsmasq", you should see it running. NetworkManager uses it to accomplish some tasks. It sets your computers DNS server to itself so all queries go through dnsmasq. Of course dnsmasq just forwards all queries to your real server by default.

[@robcalogero]

Hey Mark, I am new to PFsense and am having a issue with the DHCP service will not start ! Log shows/var/db/dhcpd.leases line 0: whitespace too long, buffer overflow. do you know how to fix this ? Thanks

[@mattcero1]

Great video guy! My IP Phone, Obihai, is the only thing on my network that won't pull an IP from the DHCP server on PFSense. Any ideas? It works if I put a static in it but will no longer pull an IP when set to DHCP after many reboots. Thanks man.

[@alvint4944]

Hi Mark! Quick question, our pfsense ip address is 192.168.2.1 How can i make our workstation to be 192.168.2.xxx? Pfsense always give me an error to assign an ip the is 'outside' the pool I need our workstations to be 192.168.2.xxx, even if i need to change my pfsense box ip. Hope to hear from you. Thanks for all your great pfsense videos!

[@SamytheBullFitness]

Hi! I just took over a new customer who had pfsense setup as their router, previous tech left on bad terms and did not provide password, i reset the password and got in. I had to wipe the LAN connection as for some reason i could not obtain a valid IP. Finally got that working and hit the GUI, at this point i must have deleted the setup for WAN as i can no longer get the internet to work :( This customer was connected directly via a network card Bell's fiber box without a DSL modem thus am not sure if i use PPPoe with customer's DSL credentials (does not work) or another method since he doesn't use a modem...I tried setting up a modem / pppoe from my office and it worked, but i also tried with his modem and his credentials and it did not! Please help! Thanks

[@bogdanmarkovic]

+Mark Furneaux Your pfsense videos helped me a lot, as well as ur suggestions on power supply. However one thing I cant find video or even a nice textual explanation/guide is whether pfsense can aggregate two or more internet connections. When i say aggregate I mean combining throughput, something like what mushroom network devices do. If pfsense is actually able to do that kind of aggregation it would be really helpful if u could do a video about how to do that.

[@invictusaeternum]

These videos are amazing.

[@nadeemnasir3145]

how to block some site like fb ,youtube in pfsense which trafic going through dhcp in pf sense

[@MrTechswim]

Love your video! Keep it up!

[@Tntdruid]

Sad you did not make one for IPv6

[@clausveggerby]

Which theme are you using?

[@Alucardko]

Hi, I have a question, I hope u can help me, My internet provider give me 3 IP publics assigned to a specific ips(192.168.17.2- 192.168.17.3- 192.168.17.4), I have tried to redirect one ip to the ip of a machine in the pfsense lan(192.168.4.10), but I have not succeeded

[@maxharrison9918]

Is there going to be a video on OpenVPN?

[@ProjectRK3147]

nice vid. Please make a video tutorial for dhcp server for each interfaces?

[@StefanRows]

Thanks!

[@geogmz8277]

You should do a High Availability video with CARP...

[@baconblaster6422]

VIDEO ON CUSTOM FIREWALL RULES MARK....THANKSSSSSS BUD!

[@paulstaley4245]

You should time stamp different parts in the description so I can skip to the section I want to watch.

[@nadeemnasir3145]

can any one tell me i want to block some social site like facebook ,youtube etc in office those client that are going through dhcp how to create rule or anything for done this work.

[@SooperBeez]

wheres the next videos! :> maybe do some videos of snort, squid, squidguard, havp, ntop, pfblockerng, openvpn come on man! got an itch that only you can scratch

[@SamuraiAngels]

hi, if i have 1000 employees and each one of them will be given a static ip from dhcp lease then kindly tell me how will i configure the ip pool???? eg, 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.255 from this pool i have given 255 peoples static ip but i am unable to assign ip to the rest of the 745 peoples. My question is how i will assign "a pool" or different ip pools to accommodate 1000 peoples with static ip. Kindly reply, Thanks.

[@MikaelS1977]

No expert but, if you have that many client your lan settings must first grow to ex: 192.168.x.x netmask 255.255.0.0 That gives it 255*255 addreses. Then change your DHCP settings.

[@SamuraiAngels]

Thanks Bro, its actually subnet mask which determine the size of your network, my subnet mask was 24 when i was trying to figure it out but later i simply changed the subnet mask to 16 which looks the same the one you mentioned above (255.255.0.0), it can be changed in GUI mode or you can set the interfaces options in dos mode. i really appreciate your reply, Thanks.

[@mashraki1]

@@SamuraiAngels Can you please guide bit more regarding changing of subnet mask to 16. I am in to a similar situation, like my subnet mask is 255.255.255.0

[@SamuraiAngels]

​@@mashraki1 , Bro subnet mask determines the size of ur network and to assign ips to a larger scale of network u need to know more about bits aswel, as far i know a subnet mask have 8,16,24 bits if you will assign 24 bits to ur subnet then your subnet mask will look like this 255.255.255.0, now if u will assign it 16 then it will look like this 255.255.0.0 and 8 bits will look like 255.0.0.0 which means a very large range of ips can be assigned to ur clients by using 8 bit subnet mask. Now to your question that how to change it? simply go to interfaces then LAN settings and then look for static ipv4 configuration. Now under this section you will find the GUI login ip address and next to it is bits of subnet mask, click on the pull down menu and click on 16 number and now u save the settings and reboot. Congrats u have a subnet mask with 16 bits which will be like 255.255.0.0. still if u need more help then let me know.

[@mashraki1]

@@SamuraiAngels Thank you so much for the detailed answer. Much appreciate

[@MdmanProductions]

keep uploading theese please

[@ammini999]

Hi guys, I would buy this one www.hystou.com/products/fanless-computers/dual-lan-j1800-j1900/2015-fanless-mini-pc-computer-itx-with-intel-baytrail-j1800-4g-ram-16g-ssd-2184.html do you think could be fine, I don't know if the NICs are INTEL though. Are 16GB SSD enough? The price seems ok. Thank for your help.

[@troyBORG]

Can't wait for your video about DNS. I got my box all build. imgur.com/a/vCM20 Runs at 16C, and uses 26.5W while idle. imgur.com/q0NU0A5

[@TheUbuntuGuy]

+troyBORG Hey I recognise those photos from /r/PFSENSE! Is that a real temperature? I'd have to check my thermodynamics, but I didn't think you could get less than ambient with just an air cooler. Does it have a phase change liquid inside maybe?

[@troyBORG]

Mark Furneaux Its 65F inside my house. I have no idea how its colder then the room. Its a passive cooler, with a NF-A9 in the rear fan slot. That's what it shows. i.imgur.com/VHFGixq.png