Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Have I set this up right or am I being stupid?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    35 Posts 2 Posters 3.9k Views 3 Watching
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • F022YF Offline
      F022Y
      last edited by

      So this morning I added google dns (if i've done it right). Attached i've added my current dashboard.

      54824bc3-281c-4e72-a70a-c4a5fcfe020a-image.png

      Some pings i did this morning to the PFsense VM (254 address), The ESXI host (250 address), cloudflare dns and google dns.

      e7352ea5-5a65-4257-b331-5c92ff9960f1-image.png

      My Thinkbroadband quality monitor for yesterday, ignore the red bar as that was me taking the router offline to try literally anything.

      e05b149f-9e57-4458-b9d1-6a52d773b379-image.png

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • stephenw10S Offline
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        Ok, if existing streams are cut it's probably not DNS.

        I note in your screenshot you have only one gateway and it's showing as offline. Is that because you were doing something at that point that disconnected it?

        It also looks like you're monitoring the gateway IP itself (the default) which won't show you any issues upstream of that.
        Try this; edit the gateway in System > Routing > Gateways and set an external Monitor IP. I would use 8.8.8.8 there since you've proved it responds. Also set Disable Gateway Monitoring Action. Since you only have one gateway there is no need for it to trigger a reload but you still want to log the gateway status.

        Steve

        F022YF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • F022YF Offline
          F022Y @stephenw10
          last edited by F022Y

          @stephenw10 The gateway changes between 2, 244 and 243. 244 seems to never respond yet 243 does. My ISP has advised these are gateways to their network not the internet breakout.

          I never actually set the gateway it appears to be picked up from PPPoE.

          I've added as you suggest and will see what happens.

          19b37145-7a4b-4ffb-a5b4-4e3f29de8a43-image.png

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • stephenw10S Offline
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            Yeah, the ISPs gateway does not have to respond to ping. My own connections, with BT, do not. Setting an external monitor gives better data anyway.

            The gateway should only ever change between PPPoE sessions. If you are seeing it change that implies the PPP session is bouncing which would definitely break open connections.

            Steve

            F022YF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • F022YF Offline
              F022Y @stephenw10
              last edited by F022Y

              @stephenw10 Well I'll run it like this and see what happens. The missus plays Sea of Thieves and i don't think i can take anymore "IT'S DONE IT AGAIN!!" conversations lol.

              We do have an AltNet threating to install symmetric 1Gbps fibre which would be a godsend for the ISOs i have to send around and means i can drop a point of failure (the Vigor166) out of the network loop.

              As an aside this is what my TBB quality check looks like when pfsense shows the 244 gateway.
              e6bfde08-a04f-42dc-9828-4316b1115680-image.png
              That to me looks like congestion but my ISP assures me that is just TBB just misreporting.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • stephenw10S Offline
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                Are you on g.fast? Is that an imported V166? When I was looking into this (which was a while back!) Draytek hadn't started selling those in the UK yet.

                Yeah that graph looks bad. See what the pfSense monitoring graphs look like against 8.8.8.8 after a while. I wouldn't really expect any packet loss unless you're filling the WAN entirely.

                Steve

                F022YF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • F022YF Offline
                  F022Y @stephenw10
                  last edited by

                  @stephenw10 No not on g.fast and i bought it in the UK

                  stephenw10S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • stephenw10S Offline
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator @F022Y
                    last edited by

                    Mmm, interesting. Let's see what pfSense shows against 8.8.8.8 then.

                    This is what my WANs look like over 2 days:

                    Screenshot from 2021-12-09 16-10-00.png

                    0% loss on both and minimal latency change. WAN is standard FTTC VDSL, WAN2 is g.fast.
                    That's monitoring against 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

                    Steve

                    F022YF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • F022YF Offline
                      F022Y @stephenw10
                      last edited by

                      @stephenw10 Where is that graph hiding? I'm still getting used to the interface

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • stephenw10S Offline
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by

                        In Status > Monitoring. Hit the 'wrench' icon to configure the graph.

                        F022YF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • F022YF Offline
                          F022Y @stephenw10
                          last edited by

                          @stephenw10 Thank you again for your help, i'll report back in a few days :)

                          F022YF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • F022YF Offline
                            F022Y @F022Y
                            last edited by

                            So ran it with your suggested change for 2 days.

                            36e1b11e-4638-432b-9a49-8117b734d53c-image.png

                            That is just a 80/20 FTTC connection but i think i have been banded as my Draytek show interleaving on the down stream.

                            1d3318e4-c405-4a4c-bde7-152cdd788d18-image.png

                            Hopefully DLM will kick in after a few days and sort it out.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • stephenw10S Offline
                              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                              last edited by

                              If you enable the WAN traffic graph on the other axis you can check to see if you were moving a lot of traffic when you saw the packet loss and latency. I don't really expect to see any loss.

                              I still use an old HG612 there and my line looks similar:

                              # xdslcmd info --state --stats
                              xdslcmd: ADSL driver and PHY status
                              Status: Showtime
                              Retrain Reason:	0
                              Last initialization procedure status:	0
                              Max:	Upstream rate = 26292 Kbps, Downstream rate = 73580 Kbps
                              Bearer:	0, Upstream rate = 19999 Kbps, Downstream rate = 66999 Kbps
                              Bearer:	1, Upstream rate = 0 Kbps, Downstream rate = 0 Kbps
                              Link Power State:	L0
                              Mode:			VDSL2 Annex B
                              VDSL2 Profile:		Profile 17a
                              TPS-TC:			PTM Mode(0x0)
                              Trellis:		U:ON /D:ON
                              Line Status:		No Defect
                              Training Status:	Showtime
                              		Down		Up
                              SNR (dB):	 8.1		 15.3
                              Attn(dB):	 13.6		 0.0
                              Pwr(dBm):	 14.0		 3.0
                              
                              F022YF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • F022YF Offline
                                F022Y @stephenw10
                                last edited by

                                @stephenw10 I see a few spikes (I expect steam updating)

                                e5759731-519c-4d15-8314-60c7e6b3806e-image.png

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • F022YF Offline
                                  F022Y
                                  last edited by

                                  Sorry for the delayed response been away for work.

                                  It appears whatever was the cause has gone. Been over a week and no connection drops.

                                  776d45d7-b747-4aea-990c-75bb7e43331f-image.png

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • stephenw10S Offline
                                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                    last edited by

                                    Nice, something upstream then. Good result. 👍

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • F022YF Offline
                                      F022Y
                                      last edited by

                                      @stephenw10 Afraid to say about 10:30am the internet died. This was followed by the usual unimpressed look from the wife as she was knee deep the the latest season of the witcher.

                                      From the pfsense dashboard the WAN interface shows down

                                      de4e2981-84cd-4cbd-86d7-07fc082f900c-image.png

                                      I can connect to the web GUI of the modem and that looks good.

                                      05380d03-87c0-4bdb-8b3e-d6ccecbaee3f-image.png

                                      From here i've done the usual tests.

                                      VDSL Status
                                      cc2da5d9-9534-4fa1-8d26-09a91fa85ec0-image.png

                                      ping and nslookup from desktop
                                      17e4510f-31d1-40e5-b536-d4b4ae8ec993-image.png

                                      DNS lookup from pfsense
                                      26b07db5-39be-4449-abf7-93fc5427f9d2-image.png

                                      Monitoring from pfsense
                                      d221358a-68df-4f0f-a9fd-b9825a92623c-image.png

                                      Then I tried to even force it
                                      f63f485f-4751-46c2-928a-b4598eaa0625-image.png
                                      37e092f7-aa20-48bd-985b-1cce3f72f3ed-image.png

                                      Ultimately I went to the logs.
                                      24b92b01-b292-46b4-81b1-0426228d6b29-image.png

                                      I rebooted pfsense, nothing. Rebooted the Draytek Vigor 166 modem and it came back to life. I'm kinda stumped at this point so going to ask Draytek support incase i've missed some sort of logging their box does but if you guys see anything i've missed please let me know.

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • stephenw10S Offline
                                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                        last edited by

                                        Hmm, does it comes back up if you only reboot pfSense and not the modem?

                                        You can see in the logs that it is seeing at least some response from Vodaphone's servers so the connection is making it that far.

                                        If you manually close the connection while it is working correctly and then try to reconnect does it fail?

                                        Steve

                                        F022YF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • F022YF Offline
                                          F022Y @stephenw10
                                          last edited by

                                          @stephenw10 Thanks for the response on a sunday, if i just reboot the pfsense VM the connection is still down which is why I may be leaning towards the modem now and have raised a support case with Draytek.

                                          I'll try killing the connection later on today, I dare not get between her and Henry Cavill lol

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • stephenw10S Offline
                                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                            last edited by

                                            Ha, yeah best avoid that!

                                            F022YF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                            • First post
                                              Last post
                                            Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.