Problem since ISP maintenance (ZEN)

BenKenobe

2.0.1-RELEASE (i386) built on Mon Dec 12 17:53:52 EST 2011
FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE-p6

My ISP recently replaced some of its hardware in the exchange (or BT did on their behalf) they went from whatever it was to what they describe as 21CN.

Since they did this their connection is hopeless their gateways seem to change frequently and when they do the connection is lost and never recovers, plus the web interface for pFSense no longer seems to work particularly well as in you select a menu item and you wait, and you wait , and you wait ….. and you wait

I have two networks into the house

Zen
BT

I have them configured as a loadshare with both as Tier1 on WAN and OPT1 respectively, trigger level is packet loss, both interfaces are set for dynamic as the gateway IP. When the zen fails any 'states' that had a connection open on it remain and do not switch to the remaining connection i.e BT. , as a result the user gets a 'not found' error.

The BT connection has been no issue - but then it's gateway never changes.

Before I can beat zen up I need to be 100% sure that the failure isn't in pFSense (kindly avoid the normal tech response of blaming others before exploring the issues). the reason I say this is that

Rebooting pFSense fixes the disconnect and Zen connection comes back up but with a different gateway
Parts of the pFSense GUI are unresponsive when Zen goes down
I expect dynamic gateways to be just that and I expect pFSense to handle it - so why isn't it doing so without manual intervention

BUT ....

My BT connection is rock solid, the Zen connection used to be, since the Zen 'upgrade' took place I have had problems, I would have no hesitation going for the throat of Zen if pFSense were behaving as I would expect, but it isn't, does the new 21CN hardware in the exchange behave in a way that pFSense does not understand or deal with properly.

galaxy60

I have experienced slow access to the GUI when my first WAN went down, the fix for the GUI only was to add multiple DNS destinations.

Goto System -> General Setup -> DNS Servers

My Setup uses the following

8.8.8.8 - WAN1
8.8.4.4 - WAN2

I found this speeded up the GUI with a WAN failure.

Are you using a PPPoE connection for the ZEN connection if so have you checked the firmware in your ADSL Modem is up to date and ensure you have ticked " Dial on Demand" with a time out of " 0 "