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    Zotac CI323 Crashing pfSense 2.3.2 - WAN interface says up but no IP??

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • KOMK Offline
      KOM
      last edited by

      Please report back in a week or so if you're convinced it fixed your issue.

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      • D Offline
        Doboy
        last edited by

        Will do

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        • D Offline
          Doboy
          last edited by

          No go! crashed after 3 days..

          Again no WAN IP.. Reboot.. Still no WAN IP, had to reboot modem this time

          Called my ISP they are looking into it, seems my neighbors had same issues as me in the past few weeks at the exact same time (goes down for me, goes down for them) they say they fixed the issue on the 17th, so maybe today was just a fluke.. I will monitor it..

          thx again for all the help guys

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          • D Offline
            Doboy
            last edited by

            Well still same issues, trying swapping the interfaces, same thing. it will eventually crash and no IP on WAN interface.

            Updated the zotac to latest BIOS also.

            When its happening, the physical NIC on the back has one steady orange led on the left and a blinking yellow on the right. Will have to look up what that means on the zotac site i guess as different manufacturers could have different color schemes ?

            Maybe i can try and install an earlier release of pfSense? see if that helps? is there one you suggest?

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            • KOMK Offline
              KOM
              last edited by

              So the problem follows WAN and not a specific interface?  The NIC that gets the traffic first dies?  Could be those NICs are choking under load, but it's hard to say for sure.

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              • D Offline
                Doboy
                last edited by

                Yes it follows the WAN interface..  :-\

                Is there some kind of troubleshooting/diag I can do do gather some useful info for the devs?

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                • KOMK Offline
                  KOM
                  last edited by

                  Not that I'm aware of.  Since others are using this same unit without issue, there might not be anything to be done in general.  You might have a cursed unit.  Have you contacted Zotac to see what they have to say?

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                  • D Offline
                    Doboy
                    last edited by

                    But are there others using this without issue? and at the speeds i am using? > 120MBit WAN?

                    I see a few posts about these and realtek NICS dropping..

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                    • KOMK Offline
                      KOM
                      last edited by

                      I have no idea as to the bandwidth other ZBox users had so I can't vouch for that, but I would be surprised that a Gigabit interface was dying when under about 25% of its maximum realworld load.  Here's another potential test.  Take the unit offline and hang a linux box off of each interface, then run iperf from one node to the other.  Do your ZBox interfaces act up when being pounded by iperf?

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                      • D Offline
                        Doboy
                        last edited by

                        that might be hard to do, my home is strictly windows :)

                        I will see if there is an iperf comparable prog for Win?  that fact that it follows the WAN interface leads me to believe it might have something to do with the pfsense install..

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                        • KOMK Offline
                          KOM
                          last edited by

                          I will see if there is an iperf comparable prog for Win?

                          https://iperf.fr/iperf-download.php#windows

                          that fact that it follows the WAN interface leads me to believe it might have something to do with the pfsense install.

                          Perhaps, but there isn't yet enough information.

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                          • D Offline
                            Doboy
                            last edited by

                            Hmm crashed again, this time i noticed that the NIC Link light for the WAN is red steady, except for a bootup when its green.

                            LAN NIC Led is steady green (1Gbps)

                            I force the WAN link to 100Mbps and its steady green.. Seems the LED's are different on each NIC? I think its about time i try an older release.

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                            • KOMK Offline
                              KOM
                              last edited by

                              Check your Zotac manual or support site to see what their colour scheme is. The red LED might be a clue.  I'm also very curious to hear about the outcome of your test.  Pound a smuch UDP data as you can from node to node and see if it can sustain a high throughput for a significant period of time.

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                              • D Offline
                                Doboy
                                last edited by

                                Updating for closures sake

                                After a few weeks of trying to fix it i think i finally have my zotac box stable, no "watchdog timeout" and loss of WAN IP under heavy load in about 8 days. Longest run ever.

                                Need to test for a longer period of time for stability , but what i did was compile the latest realtek freeBSD driver (1.92) and load it on start up using kldload. Seems ok for now.

                                Before all this NOTHING was working stable. Always crashed on the WAN ip (watchdog timeout) no matter what interface it was assigned to (re0 - re1)

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                                • KOMK Offline
                                  KOM
                                  last edited by

                                  Thanks for the update.  The notorious Realtek NIC strikes again.  I would much rather have one of those little Chinese mini-PCs with the Intel NICs than the ZBox, I suspect.

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                                  • PippinP Offline
                                    Pippin
                                    last edited by

                                    So, driver issue, who`s responsible for that ;)

                                    I gloomily came to the ironic conclusion that if you take a highly intelligent person and give them the best possible, elite education, then you will most likely wind up with an academic who is completely impervious to reality.
                                    Halton Arp

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