Configure pf Firewall
Overview
The philosophy we will use for the fire wall is that we split in 2 or 4 steps depending on if the traffic initiated outside WAN or RED side or the inside LAN or GREEN.
First of all we use a private network range on the LAN side. So we will need to use NAT to be able to communicate from the LAN to the WAN.
Traffic initiated on the LAN will be send to the WAN destination using NAT. NAT will pickup the return traffic and translate it the the correct LAN host.
The fact that we use a private network range, also mean we have only one public available IP address to which all traffic initiated on the WAN wil be send. We therefore need to redirect the external traffic to the right host.
Furthermore we use queues to prioritise traffic, so our web side will be responsive and video will not be hampered by a large file transfer. Queues work on the WAN interface for the LAN → WAN traffic.
LAN → WAN
Lets start with the LAN → WAN traffic first.
By using macros we are able to use only a few rules for a lot of different traffic. The major split used here is:
client_out ports, i.e. http, https apps_out ports i.e. Dyn updater, Razor, dccproc
A NAT rule is required to facilitate the private network range ip addresses.
nat on $ext_if inet from $localnet to any -> ($ext_if)
These will allow to have only 2 rules one at the LAN NIC and one at the WAN NIC.
pass in on $int_if proto tcp from $localnet to port $apps_out pass in on $int_if proto tcp from $localnet to port $client_out pass out on $ext_if proto tcp from ($ext_if) to !($ext_if) port $apps_out queue (q_def, q_pri) pass out on $ext_if proto tcp from ($ext_if) to !($ext_if) port $client_out queue (q_def, q_pri)
With the 1st 2 rules traffic flows into firewall over the LAN NIC.
With the 2nd 2 rules traffic flows out of the firewall over the default queue using the WAN NIC.
This could have been just one rule each by combining the ports of client and apps. However this setup provides the opportunity to easily change the priority for one of these traffic classes at a later stage.
WAN → LAN
For the WAN to LAN we have to make a few considerations. If for instance the redirect rule is used with pass like so:
rdr pass on $ext_if proto tcp to $ext_if port $web_ports -> $web_server
The return traffic will then go through the default queue and not through, for instance, the web queue. Therefore a different rdr and a pass rule will be used, like this.
rdr on $ext_if proto tcp to $ext_if port $web_ports -> $web_server pass in on $ext_if proto tcp from any to $web_server port $web_ports queue (q_web, q_pri)
The 1st rule will redirect the traffic to the right host.
The 2nd rule will pass the traffic through the WAN NIC into the firewall
The traffic is now in the firewall so we need to let it exit on the LAN NIC like this
pass out on $int_if proto tcp to $web_server port $web_ports
So traffic is now flowing into WAN NIC through the firewall out of the LAN NIC.
The return traffic will go out through the earlier defined lan to wan routes using the client_out rules i.e.:
pass in on $int_if proto tcp from $localnet to port $client_out pass out on $ext_if proto tcp from ($ext_if) to !($ext_if) port $client_out queue (q_def, q_pri)