QNAP pfSense dropout

stephenw10

pfSense not playing nicely with Bigpond

Hmm, waaay back in the day there were some special options for bigpond. Anything logged in dhcp?

Does a pcap show it requesting leases? ARPing for stuff?

ppal

Thank you for your suggestions earlier. I’ll revisit pfSense after completing my testing with OPNSense. I noticed that another user had a similar issue (https://forum.netgate.com/topic/169400/pfsense-ipv6-with-telstra-nbn), but it seems they didn’t receive much assistance on the forum.

Apparently, there’s a detailed 32-step guide to get IPv6 working: https://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/pfsense_ipv6_telstra.

For now, even having IPv4 running reliably would be a great starting point!

Thanks again for your insights.

Best regards,

stephenw10

Hmm, I'm never sure how similar services are between providers on NBN. That seems to be IPv6 specific though and you stopped seeing all connectivity.

ppal

@stephenw10 Hi

I have swapped the LAN and WAN ports. What would be the best package to monitor the connections.

stephenw10

It should be detected and logged by the gateway monitoring anyway without a package.

However you can run something like mytraceroute on the firewall to see where it fails. Or something smokeping on a client behind the firewall.

ppal

@stephenw10 I found this https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/small-business/support/pdf/nbn-byo-%20router-guide.pdf - Looks like requires traffic shaping and requires. MTU 1500 or lower . Probably go for MTU 1492 and MSS 1452 and shape the traffic to my tier.

stephenw10

Hmm, well I guess that could do it if they cut you off when you overrun your tier bandwidth.

ppal

@stephenw10, I swapped the LAN and WAN ports, and it worked for about 7 hours. During that time, I believed the issue was resolved, but unfortunately, it locked up again with packet failures. I'll give it another try, but one would expect the shaping to be handled on their end. It's worth testing, though. Thanks for engaging.

stephenw10

Mmm, it's been a while but I have seen providers that police bandwidth by just cutting connections. I don't recall seeing that for anything end user facing though.

ppal

@stephenw10 Here’s a professional rewrite:

Subject: MTU Configuration Issue with ISP-Supplied Router

Hello @stephenw10,

I configured the MTU to 1492 (with MSS at 1452) on my ISP-supplied router. This setting was based on recommendations for my connection type.

However, after sitting idle for some time, the router locked up overnight. The attached screenshot provides additional details.

Could you advise on any potential causes for the issue or whether further adjustments are recommended to stabilize the setup?

Thank you for your insights.

stephenw10

By 'locked up' I assume you mean just stopped passing traffic because it looks like you were still able to login to it?

ppal

@stephenw10 The issue is with the WAN—packet loss and loss of internet—but I can still access the system via LAN. Rebooting sometimes resolves it, but only for hours or minutes.

I suspect it’s a settings issue. I’ve had similar issues with this ISP when running pfSense on an old PC. However, the ISP-supplied router runs without issues for months, so the service itself seems fine.

I’m considering a Netgate appliance to remove uncertainties, but I believe the problem lies with the QNAP VM. I’ve experienced the same issue with OPNSense and SOPHOS Home on the VM: internet loss while LAN stays functional.

Swapping the LAN/WAN ports yields the same result, so it doesn’t seem to be a port-specific problem.