Some random notes garnered from trolling the mail achives etc.
Table of Contents
[Ref: PF: Address Pools and Load Balancing
Scenario: You have two or more external connections you wish to more effectively utilise by sharing the external traffic across those links.
Packet Filter provides the route-to filter option which supports load distribution using either: random, round-robin, or source-hash.
The connections are not equivalent, one of these links is preferable. How can we show this ‘preference’ in PF’s current algorithms?
route = ( "route-to" | "reply-to" | "dup-to" )
( routehost | "{" routehost-list "}" )
[ pooltype ]
pooltype = ( "bitmask" | "random" |
"source-hash" [ ( hex-key | string-key ) ] |
"round-robin" ) [ sticky-address ]
PF’s route-to (when state is created for the packet) will designate the route for all packets matching the same connection (session.) We can simulate variants on the default pooltype such as below,
route-to { ($ext1_if $ext1_nexthop) ($ext1_if $ext1_nexthop) ($ext1_if $ext1_nexthop) \
($ext2_if $ext2_nexthop) } round-robin
where we route 3:1 packet sessions between ext1:ext2. That will obviously not equate to 3:1 bandwidth utilisation.