How to tell if my router is defective?

ErniePantuso

I have a Sophos XG 125 that I bought to use for a home router. I installed pfSense and went through the initial, basic configuration. I got to the point where it tells me that the web gui is now accessible at 10.1.1.1. But when I go to 10.1.1.1 on my main workstation, I get "address unreachable".

Using DHCP, I'm not pulling an IP address. Using a static IP, I can't get there, either. And no matter whether I use DHCP or a static IP, if I disconnect from WiFi (so that I only have an Ethernet connection), "Connection Information" in the right-click menu of the (Linux Mint) notification area is grayed out. Also, Mint keeps popping up a notification with an Ethernet port icon with a red X and the message, "Disconnected".

I tried bypassing my switch and jacking my PC straight into the LAN port on the back of the router but I still can't reach the web gui. The lights on both the LAN and WAN ports on the back of the router are lit, and the lights on the front of the router are lit/blinking for both the WAN and LAN interfaces.

I thought maybe the problem was that I chose to fall back to http so I reset to factory defaults and left the web gui on https but same problem. I also tried (from the VGA console) pinging 8.8.8.8 - no response.

I'm using the same cables that I was using for my old router and they worked fine on it so I'm pretty sure it's not a cabling issue. Having said that, I tried new cables and the problem was the same.

Are there any other troubleshooting measures I should try or did somebody sell me a defective router?

I vaguely remember seeing something somewhere about the Sophos units needing a BIOS upgrade in order for the ports to work on pfSense. Maybe that's it but I can't seem to find a BIOS update anywhere.

Help?

ErniePantuso

Additional troubleshooting info: There seems to be some info out there about the Ethernet port number on the back of the XG 125 not matching up to igb0/1/2/etc. so I tried (leaving the interface assignments at their defaults) connecting the cable from the modem to each port, one by one, and trying to ping 8.8.8.8. None of them worked. Likewise, I tried connecting my PC to each port, one by one, and trying to pull an IP address. Again, none of them worked.

Dobby_

@ErniePantuso

Are you able to connect to the pfSense over Putty?
If so, what is shown under the point(s);

Assign Interfaces
and/or
Set interface(s) IP address

Is in the webconfigurator under Interfacessettings something you could
set up, like ports names and gateways?

ErniePantuso

@Dobby_ Putty is a Windows app, isn't it? I'm not running Windows but I can definitely run Assign Interfaces via the VGA console. It shows:

Valid interfaces are:

igb0   [MAC ID] (down) Intel(R) I211 (Copper)

for the 1st 4 interfaces. The next 4 are the same except they say (SGMII) instead of (Copper)

For Set interface(s) IP address it shows:

Available interfaces:

1 - WAN (igb1 - dhcp, dhcp6)
2 - LAN (igb0 - static)

stephenw10

The ports numbers on the case could well be completely different to the interfaces assignment order in pfSense.

Run ifconfig and see which NICs are linked. Plug in the switch or laptop to a port then check ifconfig again. Map the ports to NICs.

Jarhead

@ErniePantuso Didn't you just say you had this working in your other thread?

ErniePantuso

@Jarhead The other thread is at work. This is about my homelab setup (where I’m trying to mirror what we have at work so I can work on all of this further, from home) - except my home router is a slightly different model and the Ethernet ports don’t seem to want to work.

stephenw10

Do you even see link LEDs on the ports?

ErniePantuso

@stephenw10 said in How to tell if my router is defective?:

Do you even see link LEDs on the ports?

I do. Give me a minute and I’ll try your previous suggestion but regardless of any kind of misnumbering, shouldn’t one of them have successfully pinged 8.8.8.8 when I moved the modem cable to each port, one by one? Or given me an IP address when I moved the cable from my PC to each port, one by one?

Jarhead

@ErniePantuso I wouldn't worry about pinging the Internet at this point. Just find the LAN port first. Do a constant point of that IP.

ErniePantuso

OK, turns out I couldn't ping because my ISP had to provision my router. I had to go through port by port until they could finally see my MAC address. Turns out port 6 is igb1. What a huge pain in the neck... Anyway, now I can ping.

Next, I just left the ethernet cable from my PC in one port and just changed the interface assignment for the LAN port until I found the assignment that lets me access the web gui. So port 7 is igb2 and I can access the web gui using a static IP - but I can also pull an IP via DHCP. I guess I'll repeat that until I've mapped all the ports.

Thanks for the help, everyone!