OK. So I went and got a UPS today to connect to the server for some further power stability. Putting this in place, of course, necessitated powering off and on again the server/PFSense host. Same issue. Cycling NTP this time did not seem to work so I am betting it was coincidentally noted before. I also tried marking the Gateway as up- still same issues with no connectivity. In desperation, I finally go and simply unplug the CAT 5 from the fiber modem and plug it back in. Boom. Full connectivity comes back up immediately. Makes me wonder if ESXI/ the fiber modem is maintaining some sort of state between the two which PFSense can't break till I physically reconnect? At that point, PFSense and the modem synch up and connectivity is restored I suppose. Looks like I am going to have to just make sure it gets reconnected physically every time the server is rebooted. Thanks for the response.