Is there a way to reduce the number of pings pfsense sends to the gateway?

shallowhaul

Hi, everyone;
I've got a pfsense vm ( love it ) in my lab and noticed that it sends out a large amount of pings to the gateway IP. In the span of one minute it's sent close to a 600 ping requests. Is this normal and is there a way to reduce or stop it?

Thanks in advance.

johnpoz

@shallowhaul this is pfsense monitoring that its gateway is alive and reachable.

You can adjust it if you want here.

system, routing - click edit on your gateway

But 600 seems a bit high, you must be monitoring more than 1 gateway out the same interface? maybe vpn, maybe ipv6 as well? As you see it defaults to 0.5 seconds so in 1 minute should be 120 pings.

Gertjan

@shallowhaul said in Is there a way to reduce the number of pings pfsense sends to the gateway?:

Is this normal and is there a way to reduce or stop it?

Totally normal.

See for yourself : System > Routing and edit the/a gateway.

Scroll down, locate the

just above the save button.
Click it.

You see entries like "Probe Interval" set to 500 ms, and that explains the 120 pings per seconds.
120 is not 600, so some one else is also pinging.
Are the other 480 outgoing ? incoming ?

Before you change any value, read "Additional information", and check the box called "I fully understood the implications and want to go ahead.".

johnpoz

@gertjan we must of hit submit like same exact time, I beat you too it hehehe ;)

As we were saying, here is a sniff and you see the timestamps on the left there of the pings it sends are like 1/2 second apart

If your seeing 600, you counting the returns as well would put you at like 240, so maybe also another gateway being monitored on the same interface? Or maybe that 500 ms interval has been edited to something lower?

Gertjan

@johnpoz said in Is there a way to reduce the number of pings pfsense sends to the gateway?:

I beat you too it

I'm posting from France ....

johnpoz

@gertjan ah so the latency from france to the forums is your excuse - hehehe ROFL, hehehee

shallowhaul

Thanks, everyone.

You're all correct. The count did include the replies. hahaha, I need more coffee. But, I also would like to reduce the noise. These answers are exactly what I was looking for. Really appreciate the quick responses. Thank you again!!