IPSec VPN packet loss

xibalba · Sep 14, 2006, 3:25 AM

Hello all,
I just installed two fresh copies of pfSense. One at my location and another at my friend's location. We added the IPSec VPN Tunnels and left all the defaults, with the exceptions of

my subnet 192.168.1.0/24
his subnet 192.168.2.0/24

on my end, for the remote gateway i set the WAN IP address of his pfSense box.
under phase 1: encryption is 3des, hash, md5, dh key group 2,
The identifier under phase 1 is set as "My IP Address" (left blank)
Authentication Method : preshared-key.

when i ping -t 192.168.2.1 (his router) from my computer I am able to get icmp replies back from his router, however it is very intermittent (around 60% packet loss). There is nothing else running through either of our links and bandwidth shaping is disabled. Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.

hoba · Sep 14, 2006, 5:03 AM

Lower the MTUs at both WANs at interfaces>WAN. Start with something like 1300. If this makes the problem go away raise the MTUs again until it breaks again and go back a step. Also make sure you are on the latest version.

xibalba · Sep 15, 2006, 1:52 AM

hoba, thanks for the reply. it turned out to be faulty network card on the WAN interface. Now the ipsec vpn is working flawlessly. great off-shoot of FreeBSD/M0n0wall you guys have created.