PFsense loses default gateway.

rainmakers99 · May 19, 2017, 4:02 PM

I have an intermittent problem with my pfsense router losing its default gateway. I believe the issue occurs when my cable modem loses connection, and reconnects with my ISP. When the problem occurs if I manually renew the dynamic ip address I will get an address, but the gateway will not come back regardless of getting a new IP or getting the same ip from my ISP If I manually put in an IPV4 route it works.

Over time I tried the following:
Disabling the default gateway monitoring under the routing->Gateways->Edit
Changed the wan port from a RealTek nic to the on board Intel 82566dc NIC.
Reinstalled OS and restored settings from backup.
But, none of the actions resolved the problem.

I am running pfsense version 2.3.4, but the issue has been occuring for over a year.

I started with the product in the 1.2 days, and have been upgrading. I'm thinking I may have an pfsense settings rot issue in part because when upgradeing to the 2.3 release on the console above the menue I get several php deprecated errors similar to: "PHP Deprecated: Comments starting with '#' are deprecated in /usr/local/etc/php/extensions.ini on line 2 in Unknown on line 0
"

Does anyone have any suggestions I could try to resolve the gateway issue, so I can avoid the manual rebuild.
, and would need to rebuild manually.

Thanks in advance.

Joe–

w0w · May 20, 2017, 4:14 AM

What type of connection, do you have double NAT or you receive external IP on pfSense?

rainmakers99 · May 20, 2017, 4:43 AM

Just a basic residential cable connection. 1 public ip. I do have a disabled gateway for when I had a 2nd connection, another disabled Hurricane Electric IPV6, and disabled wan IPV6 gateways.

w0w · May 20, 2017, 7:35 AM

So… let me ask you again.
Do you have public IP on pfSense side (modem is in bridge mode)?

rainmakers99 · May 20, 2017, 2:53 PM

Yes the modem is in bridge mode. The wan interface has a public up assigned

Sorry for confusion but I didn't know cable provider did nat the connection unless the modem had a built in router.

w0w · May 21, 2017, 6:52 AM

Do some screenshot of your WAN settings, please.

rainmakers99 · May 21, 2017, 7:13 PM

I attached screenshots of the wan interface, Gateway screen under routes, and my IPV4 gateway that I am having problems with.

Joe–

rainmakers99 · May 23, 2017, 6:16 PM

Any thoughts on what could be causing the issue, or is there more info required?

Joe–

w0w · May 24, 2017, 3:52 AM

For testing purposes try "Mark Gateway as Down" option instead of disabling monitoring, see what happens.
I don't see anything unusual in your configuration.
Also does modem or pfSense reboot help in this situation?
About PHP errors, I can't understand how config errors can influence with PHP errors. Do you have any packages installed?
Maybe it's time to start from scratch? Try minimal configuration to check if problem persists.

rainmakers99 · May 29, 2017, 2:00 PM

Sorry for the late response, hard to get the fam. to OK some downtime. :)

I did try marking the gateway as down, then tested by unplugging the cable modem for 30 minutes. When I plugged it back in the modem came back online, but no default gateway anymore until I rebooted.

Yes rebooting PFSense brings the default gateway back, this has been my interim fix.

I don't think the php errors would be related to this problem. from what I read online it seemed like they were related to how comments changed in PHP files. I do have the following packages installed: Avahi, darkstat, iftop, iperf, LADVD, openvpn-client-export, & RRD_Summary.

I've been on the fence for a while now to rebuild the system to see if a fresh build would help. This post is my step before hand. Wanted to check there isn't a bug; with a known workaround.

rainmakers99 · Jun 11, 2017, 12:45 AM

I believe that the issue may be solved. Time will tell when the cable modem blips again.

If you look at my gateways.png screenshot the WAN_DHCP gateway did not have the "(Default)" the Wan_DHCP6 and testvlangw only had the "(Default)" set. Once I added the default to the WAN_DHCP my tests recovered. I unplugged the modem for 30 minutes and when i plugged back in and had success.

I also swapped the nic for the wlan to a broadcomm that I had, since the chipset was on the official HCL. But, I noticed it didn't resolve the issue. Interesting enough after I swapped the nic in the PFSense GUI the routes still shown the old nic as the gateway interface until I rebooted.

I also thought it strange that a reboot gave the Wan_DHCP a default entry in the routing table.