packets dropping on the ASA

[Damon Day]

i have an FTP server we are trying to establish. the configuration is like this

Front end server in the DMZ 172.18.0.2/24 with 172.18.0.1/24 as the gateway which is on the ASA

back end server 10.85.0.54/24 

now the way it is supposed to work is the front end receives the connection over SSH on port 22 and then makes a connection to the backend server on tcp/1180. however whats happening is the packets are being denied and dropped at the ASA with the following error

Deny TCP (no connection) from 172.18.0.2/1180 to 10.85.0.54/xxxxx flags SYN ACK on interface DMZ.

what would cause a SYN ACK to drop this way? I believe i have a cisco smartnet contract on this ASA. any help would be greatly appreciated. 

thanks!

[Philip D'Ath]

Any chance you have asymmetric routing, or a server with two NICs in two of the related subnets?

[Akshay Rastogi · Accepted solution]

Hi Damon,

It looks like that the SYN packet leaves one interface however SYN-ACK comes on different interface. Behind which interface you have backend server? If the backend server is on different interface than DMZ then why SYN-ACK received on DMZ. It must be received on the Backend connected ASA interface.

There could be a possibility that the SYN-ACK packet is received on a different interface than the one from where SYN packet left for the server(Asymetric Routing).

Check the routing from the Backend Server side.

Hope it helps.

Regards,

Akshay Rastogi

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