Random & intermittent network slowdowns and connection issues

pftdm007

Hello,

Lately I have been observing that machines and VM's on my LAN seem to have intermittent and random issues connecting to a database server also located on the LAN.

Errors such as:

A fatal error has occurred
Connect failed: (2002) php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: 
Name or service not known

I also observe random episodes of severe slowness, especially for a small LAN with gigabit and SSD storage on both ends (servers, VM's and clients).

I posted on another forum and someone suggested it could be DNS reolution issues at the pfsense level.

Usually, when getting an error like the one posted above, I simply hit refresh (F5) and the page loads as expected without further errors..

The above issue just occured a few minutes ago and I quickly logged to pfsense to see the DNS resolver logs. I saw this:

Mar 20 15:04:32	unbound	60349	[60349:3] debug: outnettcp got tcp error -1
Mar 20 15:04:32	unbound	60349	[60349:1] debug: outnettcp got tcp error -1
Mar 20 15:04:32	unbound	60349	[60349:3] debug: outnettcp got tcp error -1
Mar 20 15:04:30	unbound	60349	[60349:0] debug: outnettcp got tcp error -1
Mar 20 15:04:30	unbound	60349	[60349:2] debug: outnettcp got tcp error -1
Mar 20 15:04:30	unbound	60349	[60349:2] debug: outnettcp got tcp error -1
Mar 20 15:04:30	unbound	60349	[60349:0] debug: outnettcp got tcp error -1
Mar 20 15:04:30	unbound	60349	[60349:1] debug: outnettcp got tcp error -1

When I experience connection errors or network slowdowns, usually logging in to pfsense can take up to a minute to display the dashboard. No errors are shown...

pfsense's hard drive seems OK, and system logs not showing issues or errors...

DNS resolver config:
Enable: CHECKED
Enable SSL: Checked
Network interfaces: Selected all VLAN's I want Unbound to listed to requests
Outgoing network interfaces: WAN
System Domain Local Zone Type: Transparent
DNSSEC: UNCHECKED
Python: ENABLED
DNS Query forwarding: ENABLED + USE SSL
DHCP Registration: UNCHECKED
Static DHCP: CHECKED

2.6.0-RELEASE (amd64)
built on Mon Jan 31 19:57:53 UTC 2022
FreeBSD 12.3-STABLE