What version of fSense are you using? Issue 1: Have you checked the pfSense DHCP log. Perhaps dhcpd has died and not been restarted. Are there any other clues to the reported bad name in /var/dhcpd/var/db/dhcpd.leases? Issue 2: Does this happen before the DHCP lease renewal problem or after?

What happens when you ping or traceroute your preferred name server (by IP address) from the pfSense shell? Does pfSense have exclusive use of the interface its using as its WAN interface or does the VM host get involved? If the latter, what does the VM host do with attempts to access your preferred name server? And is there a good reason not to be working with pfSense 1.2.3?

I opened a ticket for adding more options, but I'm not sure it's something that will get into 2.0 or if it will have to wait for 2.1: http://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/663

slaps self I have no clue how I overlooked that. I checked the packages for anything at all that would be useful. Thanks!

@wallabybob: Is there a DHCP client log on the phone? Is there a "tcpdump" like utility on the phone? I'll do some research and find out. It is running android so I'm thinking I should be able to access that info.

You can just give one of them a different name (add on a "2" or "-b" or something) and it should be fine. Are these in two different subnets? If they're both on the same subnet, you probably don't really want two NICs on the same subnet with two different IPs.

Got it! The problem had nothing to do with the pfSense box. Packets are whizzing around inside just fine. With the LAN on one subnet (with SIP server) and the WLAN on another subnet, the problem is that the SIP registration ACK doesn't know how to get back to the WLAN wifi phone. A static route has to be added to the routing table on the SIP server box so that it knows the WLAN subnet can be found by going into the pfSense box through the LAN interface address. When the LAN and WLAN were bridged, no additional SIP server route was needed. It also helps to diagnose the problem with a Wireshark on the server box and not on the (LAN switch connected) browser box. Thanks for your encouragement. Bob G

You can set any option you want in 2.0 via the numbered options, so this is already solved there. There won't be any more updates to the 1.2.x line so if you want that option, you can either upgrade to 2.0 (not recommended for production environments yet) or or look at the relevant code in 2.0 and try to backport it to 1.2.x (might be feasible if you're familiar with PHP).

Anyone?

On the DHCP server settings, there is a checkbox for setting dynamic DNS updates. I believe you also need to fill in your DNS server in the DNS server field in the same DHCP server settings also, and then it will try to update that one. I haven't tried this myself, but that seems to be the purpose of the setting.

rangerdth, Do all of the domains show up in /var/dhcpd/etc/dhcpd.conf ?

@Cry: In BIND you have to terminate any name with a dot to avoid it having $ORIGIN appended.  I would treat all other DNS servers as behaving the same unless their documentation says otherwise. So I've added a dot to any name, now it's look like this: Record Name                Record Type   rDNS       Record Data                TTL mydomain.com.                    SOA                pfsense.mydomain.com. test.mydomain.com.             A            on      192.168.1.1 cnametest.mydomain.com.    CNAME              test.mydomain.com. But it still not working, if I'm trying to ping cnametest.mydomain.com Im still getting "could not find host …Please check the name and try again" Also when I'm doing an nslookup for the cname Im getting something weird: nslookup cnametest.mydomain.com Server:  pfsense.mydomain.com Address:  192.168.1.1 Name:    cnametest.mydomain.com Served by: pfsense.mydomain.com          192.168.1.1          mydomain.com Served by?? So it found something but it's able to resolved it correctly? Thank you for your time

It's been a while, sorry. This could be interesting for you:  http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,22890.0/topicseen.html especially the NIC with built in NWAY switch. Until I remembered that you were talking about an ALIX install…

Hi guys, thx very much for this excellent explanation. Well done. hy, nickolas

You set it up under the DHCP server options: http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/DHCP_Server

I saw exactly that problem on the Telewest (now VirginMedia) network many years ago and had some chats with their back end technical staff at the time (I have a background in networking and took great care to email in a ticket that would demonstrate the problem, that I knew what I was talking about and that I wanted to help them fix their system). The problem was with the DHCP servers at the ISP and wasn't something that could be fixed at the customer end.  They did fix it, but obviously the problem is back.  There isn't anything you can do unfortunately except log a ticket with them and get frustrated over explaining the problem (since most of their customer base won't have noticed).

I'd be more interested in the DHCP setup you have in place.  You don't have just one scope serving out all 1500 addresses do you?  Everything I've always heard (and what Cisco teaches) is to only have 255 clients per scope(VLAN).  It helps with ARP requests on switches and I think it could improve your pfSense DHCP page loading issue.