Seeking assistance configuring pfSense to allow cross-subnet device discovery (lemmy.d.thewooskeys.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm trying to get my new Dreamtech L10s Ultra (robot vacuum) to be discovered by Home Assistant, but they're on different subnets and I found an explanation that there are sometimes problems discovering devices across subnets. This seems odd to me because the Xiaomi Miot Auto integration in Home Assistant saw my L10s and even knew it’s IP address - but perhaps that’s TCP and the problem is that UDP can’t cross subnets?

The article says there are 2 ways to possibly overcome the cross-subnet issue: put the devices on the same subnet (currently not an option for me), and “configure IP masquearding on the outgoing routing interface for the subnet where the MI device resides.” With GPT’s help, I tried to add IP Masquerading (which I guess is just NAT), but it’s not working. I’m pretty confident I did it wrong.

My networking knowledge is very basic. Can anyone help me configure my pfSense so that my L10s on one subnet can be discovered by Home Assistant (technically, by the Xiaomi Miot Auto integration in Home Assistant) on the other subnet?

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Are you using the avahi plugin to repeat DNS messages across subnets?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I'm not. Yet. Thanks for the suggestion.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Thanks for the Avahi suggestion, @[email protected] and @[email protected]. 1 click to install, 1 click to enable, 1 click to turn on cross-subnet discovery, and everything works!

[-] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

No need for masquerading... that seems way too involved. Install Avahi or the UDP broadcast relay plugins then configure those.

As for firewall rules you'll need to allow mDNS UDP packets (port 5353 and destination address 224.0.0.251/32)

[-] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Didn't know these existed. Thanks. I'll try them.

this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023

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