Multi-WAN on a Stick

In the router world, Cisco and others refer to a VLAN router as a “router on a stick” since it can be a functioning router with only one physical network connection. pfSense® software can be configured in this manner as well, using VLANs and a managed switch capable of 802.1q trunking. Most of the deployments running more than 5 WANs use this methodology to limit the number of physical interfaces required on the firewall. In such a deployment, the WAN interfaces all reside on one physical interface on the firewall, with the internal network(s) on additional physical interfaces. Figure Multi-WAN on a stick illustrates this type of deployment.

Multi-WAN on a stick