Occasional ping timeout when pinging local network and weird issue.

[jgq85]

I've been running a ping connected wired into my unifi switch connected to my pfsense (Netgate XG-7100).
It feels like every once in a while there is some time of lag or issue I can't really explain. I have Splashtop streamer installed on this computer I'm testing from as well and ever since I put it on this new network it has issues connecting or takes a long time for me to connect.
Here in this screenshot you can see I ran a Ping for a few hours , however at some point there were 5 consecutive fails of that ping. The ping tool was pinging not only outside DNS servers, but also the internal gateway of the network I'm on on the pfsense:

So given it fails to ping the local server as well, I am assuming this is not an ISP issue.
Could ping failing be at all related to a DHCP/DNS server configuration?

[keyser]

@jgq85 Ping only requires a local IP address (already present) and if you ping IP addresses directly it is not reliant on currently working DNS/DHCP.

Your issue is not DNS/DHCP - It’s also unlikely that your ISP is the issue, pfSense should continue answering to ping even though your WAN is down.

In your case you need to do one simple test to “isolate” the problem:

You need to ping another 3rd device (not the pfSense gateway/router) on the same network/IP range as your PING client is located on.

If that shows the same problem, then it’s most likely your current client or your switch that has link stability issues - try another cable, look at switch port logs for errors and such.

If that does not exibit any problems, then your issue is most likely your PFsense suffering some kind of issue - perhaps network link stability problems, or a service doing some reload that causes the intire pfSense to become unresponsive.
Try another cable from pfsense to switch, and look at switch port logs for errors and such.
Also: Check the firewall logs for issues and service reloads.

[johnpoz]

@jgq85 said in Occasional ping timeout when pinging local network and weird issue.:

Could ping failing be at all related to a DHCP/DNS server configuration?

To dns - possible if your trying to ping via fqdn and dns failed and you would not be able to resolve what fqdn your trying to ping.

But from what you posted that seems unlikely with all of the ips failing with the same amount of losses. Seems more like you had something that the machine that was pinging had a intermittent connection problem. or you switch blipped? Something on your network caused everything your pinger was pinging to not respond. So either its connection or the really the whole network was problematic.

If it was dhcp related - its possible a client lost its lease, and had no ip, etc. But all the ips at the same time? It could of been your pinger machine? But once a lease has been gotten, its good for the time of the lease, etc. And only when it runs out would it have to renew.. Very unlikely to be related to dns or dhcp to be honest.

Did all the 5 failures for every device happen at the same time.. They all have 5 ping losses.

For being local these ping times are fairly high, 34ms - locally? That has to be wifi, and bad wifi at that.. How do you have 7ms average to google and 17,18, 34 to local IPs??

Here is ping times to my wireless harmony hub.. Which is on a different vlan that my pc ping it is on.. So its routed through pfsense, and still average of 1ms..

Ping statistics for 192.168.7.96:
    Packets: Sent = 26, Received = 26, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 6ms, Average = 1ms
Control-C

Really anything locally should be like 1 or 2 ms.. Sure wireless could give you some higher than that... But average of 34 ms to something locally - there is some off there..With min being 33??

Local wired should be sub 1ms to be honest.. What your using for ping might not support showing that? There are some tools that can report sub 1ms hrping, fping for example..

Here is what typical wired pings should be locally - you can see most are sub 1ms

From 192.168.9.253: bytes=60 seq=0019 TTL=64 ID=0a7c time=0.410ms
From 192.168.9.253: bytes=60 seq=001a TTL=64 ID=00a9 time=0.550ms
From 192.168.9.253: bytes=60 seq=001b TTL=64 ID=9aa3 time=0.517ms
From 192.168.9.253: bytes=60 seq=001c TTL=64 ID=3783 time=0.518ms
From 192.168.9.253: bytes=60 seq=001d TTL=64 ID=c3d4 time=0.460ms
From 192.168.9.253: bytes=60 seq=001e TTL=64 ID=9a27 time=0.530ms
From 192.168.9.253: bytes=60 seq=001f TTL=64 ID=02b0 time=0.883ms
[Aborting...]

Packets: sent=31, rcvd=31, error=0, lost=0 (0.0% loss) in 15.010389 sec
RTTs in ms: min/avg/max/dev: 0.342 / 0.667 / 4.004 / 0.659
Bandwidth in kbytes/sec: sent=0.123, rcvd=0.123

Seems really really odd that all your local are so high, but to 8.8.8.8 ts average of 7?