A day with the VigorNIC

JannikJung0

Hey Dylsic,

thanks for sharing your knowledge about the VigorNic 132!

I am thinking about replacing my Draytek Vigor 130, with this PCIe Card and I have a couple of questions.

Is it possible to use the secondary Ethernet Port (WAN2) in pfSense, for example as a Lan port to connect to the rest of the network?
Has the web interface been improved upon through an update, during the month you own that card?
Has it been stable so far or did you encounter any problems during daily-use?

Kind regards,
Jannik

Dylsic

Hi Jannik,

sorry for responding so late.

Only the card itself shows up as a new ethernet port. The physical ports themselves don't seem to be mapped; 'ifconfig' didn't display any new adapters besides re0.

No firmware update has been released until around a week ago when I last checked for updates.

The card has been stable although a bit on the slow end on my DSL 16MBit line. Had to reduce SNR by 6db to get the performance I was used to. Line has been stable despite this reduction.

~~On my new VDSL2 100MBit line though, the card paints a very different picture as it drops my connection at least twice a day, no matter what I set SNR to.~~ The training process also takes about two minutes, compared to the ~15 seconds training took on my old DSL 16MBit line.

I've got an external modem incoming (TD-W9980) to run some more tests to figure out whether the line or the modem is causing these issues. Should be waiting for me when I get home. Right, Amazon? ;)

[edit]
Turns out I had a faulty cable in my house wiring. Using a cat 6 cable not only got rid of the disconnects, it also improved the speed with which the card syncs by 2 MBit.

I bricked my TD-W9980 unfortunately. Got OpenWRT installed just fine (necessary for vectoring support), but when making some changes to the LAN configuration something went wrong. Turns out the usual OpenWRT recovery procedure doesn't work on this model so I need to do some soldering, which I can't because I lack the equipment. Have to ask a co-worker next year.

Got myself a ZyXEL VMG1312-B30A too and put it into bridge mode. Syncs 21mbit higher than the VigorNIC but takes equally long to do the actual synchronization. Net speed is about the same (11.3 MByte/s). Gonna keep all three of them to have spares just in case and for demonstration purposes.

Yan777

Hello Dylsic,

Many thanks for the instructions on how to configure the VigorNIC. I did it 5 times and i'm encountering the same error… :( I cant access the website or even telnet as you mention. When i do a ping to 192.168.1.1, it says host unreachable...any idea? I check the firewall rules, NAT, all looks fine...did i miss something..? :)

Cheers
Yan

Dylsic

Did you set up a new virtual interface in pfSense with an IP in the 192.168.1.0 /24 network and assign it to re0? Try pinging 192.168.1.1 (one possible address of the VigorNIC) via Diagnostics -> Ping and see if that works. If it doesn't, try changing the IP address of the virtual interface to something in the 192.168.2.0 /24 network and try pinging 192.168.2.1 (another possible address of the VigorNIC).

If none of that works, please provide me with screenshots of your OPTx settings.

The idea is to get your pfSense box to see the card first prior to any routing. Only when that works we can tackle routing.

Yan777

@Dylsic:

Did you set up a new virtual interface in pfSense with an IP in the 192.168.1.0 /24 network and assign it to re0? Try pinging 192.168.1.1 (one possible address of the VigorNIC) via Diagnostics -> Ping and see if that works. If it doesn't, try changing the IP address of the virtual interface to something in the 192.168.2.0 /24 network and try pinging 192.168.2.1 (another possible address of the VigorNIC).

If none of that works, please provide me with screenshots of your OPTx settings.

The idea is to get your pfSense box to see the card first prior to any routing. Only when that works we can tackle routing.

Screenshot attached for the OPT Interface. Do i need to assign an IP to this interface? If i assign an IP, when i log via the web interface it goes to the pfsense console instead to the Draytek console.

Capture.JPG_thumb

Dylsic

Yes, you do need to give it its own IP. If you can then access your pfSense box using this IP everything is fine, but not really what you're after. Try accessing the VigorNIC's presumed IP instead.

Here's what the OPT1 settings look like for me:

http://i.imgur.com/PPBfy12.png

Yan777

@Dylsic:

Yes, you do need to give it its own IP. If you can then access your pfSense box using this IP everything is fine, but not really what you're after. Try accessing the VigorNIC's presumed IP instead.

Here's what the OPT1 settings look like for me:

http://i.imgur.com/PPBfy12.png

Thanks. That was the missing puzzle :) I didn't assign an IP to the interface.. so it;s all good now.

Regarding the firmware, i applied the one that suitable to my ISP, i'm able to achieve the max. speed in terms of download/upload. Before applying the firmware that's suitable for my ISP, i was using the standard firmware, not optimized one for specific ISP, the download speed was around half of it.

lewisjsuk

Hi Dylsic,

I'm attempting to set up this same configuration, but I'm having a problem with your fist steps,

"How-To:

Plug the card into your router and boot it up. Set the "re0" interface to be used as the WAN port via the console.

In the pfSense webinterface, go to "Interfaces" -> "(assign)". From the drop down menu to the left of the green "+ Add" box, select the "re0" network port and click said green "+ Add" button and then "Save". It should look something like this:
http://i.imgur.com/mlD2oMx.png"

If I assign "re0" via the console to the WAN interface, I am unable to also set it to opt1 through the web interface, have I misunderstood something? I see that your WAN is reported as "PPPOE0(re0)" whereas mine just says "re0" and the mac address, is this why I don't have the option of setting re0 to OPT1. The attached screen shot illustrates the problem.

Any assistance you can offer would be appreciated.

Thanks

Scott.

![Screenshot PFSense Interfaces web.jpg](/public/imported_attachments/1/Screenshot PFSense Interfaces web.jpg)
![Screenshot PFSense Interfaces web.jpg_thumb](/public/imported_attachments/1/Screenshot PFSense Interfaces web.jpg_thumb)

lewisjsuk

Hi Yan777,

Sounds like you managed to get this working, could you possibly please help with my query above, regarding the dual assignment of the re0 interface? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in anticipation.

Scott

stephenw10

I haven't use that NIC but if it's like Drayteks other external "modems", v120 v130 etc, then it will be in bridge mode by default.

You only need to assign the re0 NIC on the card directly in order to access the cards telnet interface. If it's in bridge mode already you don't need to do that.

I assume you are using a PPPoE VDSL/ADSL connection?

Go to the PPPs tab in Interfaces > assign and create a new connection to your ISP using re0 as the parent interface.

Then go back to the Interfaces assign tab and assign WAN as the new PPPoE0 connection.

If you need to access the cards telnet interface then assign re0 as a new interface, OPT1 say. That's not necessary for PPPoE to work though.

Now go to Interfaces > WAN and set the IPv4 type to PPPoE. The details should all be there if you added them earlier but you can edit it there if required.

Assuming the card is in bridge mode the connection should come up.

Steve

gigo90

Hi All, i know this topic is a bit "old"....hope someone can help anyway.

I'm trying to repet tha same you did few yars ago, but i'm not able to reach the Vigornic 130 in any way.

Can someone help, by posting, some pictures with the main step?

thanks

stephenw10

What have you tried?

You should only need to assign the parent NIC in the mode management subnet to access it.
You might need outbound NAT too assuming the modem doesn't have a route to the pfSense LAN side. So either add a gateway, but be sure pfSense doesn't use it as the default, or switch to hybrid mode outbound NAT and add a manual rule.

Pretty much exactly as described here: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/recipes/modem-access.html

Steve

gigo90

@stephenw10 i tried with the method from Dylsic

I have, as well, a vigornic 132 that i would like to use as VDSL modem with my pfsense box

So as you probably already understand, i would like to:

set the Vigornic as PPPoE WAN to share the connection to the LAN
access the Vigornic webpage from the LAN

thanks

stephenw10

If you're using PPPoE you should be able to use the process in the doc pretty much exactly.
By default I expect the Draytek to be in bridge mode so you only need to create a PPP interface using that as parent and it will work.
Then assign the parent interface, re0 unless you have other re NICs, additionally and use that to access the modem management.

There should be no need to add a bridge.

And I would use hybrid OBN mode as I said.

Steve