Bad NIC? Howto SWAP ports and keep configuration.
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Question: I believe I may have a NIC issue. Before swapping out boxes, I was wondering if there is a way to swap the logical interfaces. I have a Intel Dual Port Ethernet card. My issue only happens on one of the ports. I’d love to keep the interface configurations by just swap the physical ports. Can I do this via the web configuration or do I have to be at the box?
Details of Issue: We have two wireless networks, a private and a guest. The private never goes down. The public goes down frequently (like 1 time a week). This network is never under load. It will go down with nobody on it. What I mean by ‘goes down’ is that I cannot ping any of them. What I found is if I unplug the public waps from the switch and then plug them in 1 by 1 I usually find one that causes all the others to stop responding to a ping. If I unplug that WAP the others stop timing out and respond to the ping. I’ve swapped the WAP a couple of times thinking I have a bad WAP but that doesn’t do it. If I go to the bad WAP and unplug it and plug it back in, all is well … for a couple of days.
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I have replaced the cabling going from the public switch to the port of the Intel Dual port card.
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I have replaced the switch I am using for the public network
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I think my next step is to isolate it down to the card. Since the private switch is plugged into the other port of that intel card, and never goes down, I want to swap the ports and see if the private network starts to experience this.
My hardware and software details
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WAN - ATT U-verse modem
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Enterprise Firewall/Router - pfsense 2.1 latest build on a dell box with 3 ports (WAN, and a dual ethernet card intel that has ports for private and public)
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Private switches(2) - Netgear Prosafe 24-Port Gigabit Switch
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Public switch(1) - Netgear Prosafe 24-Port Gigabit Switch
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WAPS(5) - public WAPs Cisco WAP300N. BTW, the private WAPs are the same make/model and have same load but never get into this situation. I am using Captive Portal turned on the public network with no authentication just a welcome screen and a connect button.
Thanks so much for your insight!
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Go into interfaces, assign. Switch the ports and save. You will then need to swap the cables.
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I swapped boxes and the problem still exists. We are a church; toward the end of the first service and start of 2nd, things stopped working like they normally do –> users can't connect to the portal ... they choose the guest network and things spin. All of the public WAPs timeout on a ping. To date, I've replaced the cabling, the switch and now the actual server box with new cards. The only way I can avoid this intermittent non-response situation is to disable the captive portal. Once I do that and the firewall is synced the public waps all become accessible. I didn't have to power them or the server/switches down.
So, I believe it is a configuration/software (captive portal) bug. Any tips on what debugging to turn on in order to nail this? I really don't need the captive portal except for limited the up/download bandwidth the pubic interface gets.
Rob
