Virtualised Router on Vmware ESXI - Trouble with configuration

Installing and Using OpenWrt
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Hello! I am trying to use OpenWRT as a router to replace the TP-Link AX5400 I am currently using, as I would like to combat bufferbloat and gain some SQM on my network with cake.

I am attempting to use a Lenovo minipc and virtualise the router, this way I can use the rest of the systems resources for a game server (or something else in the future).

I have been able to get OpenWRT installed on a VM instance and I am able to access LuCi, however I cannot seem to get an internet connection. I believe the issue is related to how the WAN & LAN are mapped to the physical nics, where its all being put through one instead of separating properly.

I intend to keep using the TP-Link and place it in "Access Point Mode" to use the onboard switch and wireless functionality.

This is a diagram of the network topology I am trying to create and my settings from the OpenWRT cli.

I live in Australia and my NBN connection is HFC through Optus, which is iPoE so I don't believe I need VLAN tagging or to use iPPPoE for the WAN connection to come through the NBN modem.

I don't know if I should create two separate vSwitches with the physical nics as their uplinks or one vSwitch with the two uplinks.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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Your picture of the configs shows an error.

WAN should be eth1. Your config device stanza for WAN is incorrect.

Also, LAN is usually made into a bridge by default. That seems to be mssing - but if you can access LuCI, it's OK.

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WAN should be eth1

Okay I will change this to eth0.

Your config device stanza for WAN is incorrect.

Sorry I don't think I understand this sentence, is this referencing the eth1 issue or something else?

Also, LAN is usually made into a bridge by default.

I believe the x86 openwrt image I started with had a different config from default: what does bridge change in practice over a LAN interface in this regard?

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Screenshot_20230328-011158_Samsung Internet
Screenshot_20230328-011158_Samsung Internet913×405 81.4 KB

  • Ummm, WAN should be eth1 as I noted. LAN is eth0.
  • Also, I notoced you have "static" and "DHCP" in 2 different stanzas, that's incorrect.

Again:

Let me know if this is clearer.

  • In practice, it allows you to add WiFi/other eth interfaces to it if necessary.
  • The default bridge was the LAN interface - you simply cbnahed it. Your wording made that somewhat vague.

I suggest settling up the WAN via the LuCI web GUI to prevent these errors.

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Hello I just wanted to update this thread if someone else stumbles across this:

I solved it, I reinstalled the VM using the OVA provided on the vmware page provided by openwrt. I also setup two vSwitches with their own port networks (one for each nic). I also ticked the "connect on startup" box for the nics on the vm settings page.

I also changed the ethernet driver to VXNET 3 (I don't know if this changed anything but openwrt seems to think the internal connections are 10gbe now haha).

After that everything seemed to work fine, I just had to give it time to boot up from the pc -> vm.

1 Like
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could you please report back if vmxnet3 driver shows the same problematic behavior on ESXi as it does in VMware Workstation? Namely, vmxnet3 driver does not keep its mapping order, the host side network binding to guest side network interface is totally random at each start.

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I'll update when I get a chance to restart the machine.

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