PPPoE and VDSL with Modem in bridge modem - periodically loses connection - how to collect logs/debugging from pfSense?
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I have an internet connection with Exetel (Australian ISP) - it's a VDSL connection, using PPPoE authentication.
We have a ZTE modem in bridge mode, and a pfSense router doing the authentication (previously was a Unifi USG).
Something seems odd in that we periodically lose internet connectivity - the connection is "up", but you can't resolve DNS names, and pinging 8.8.8.8 times out.
(The fact it also happened with the Unifi USG seems to suggest an ISP issue)
How can we diagnose this from the pfSense side? Any logging that would be helpful?
Something that can tell me when/how long it goes down for - and maybe pull some useful info on what exactly is broken?
Is there something that can react to it going down, and reset the interface, for example, or try to logout and log back in (if that's a thing).
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If you have the gateway monitoring IP set to, for example, 8.8.8.8 for the PPPoE gateway (System > Routing > Gateways) then the monitoring graphs will show you that as the quality for that WAN. You should clearly see the packet loss for the periods it's not passing.
Steve
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Interesting - aha, I hadn't seen this before. This is pretty cool.
So to view the graphs, I go to Status, Monitoring.
The default graph shows CPU - I just need to edit settings, and get it to show Quality, WAN_CONNECTION.
What's the difference between using the default Gateway (which I assume it the next hop system at my ISP), versus something like 8.8.8.8? Either one would show-up issues on my modem, right?
Is it possible to access this data via some sort of database, locally?
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Yes the default monitoring target is the gateway on that interface, the next IP hop there. That's useful for showing a link failure but won't show some connectivity issue at your ISP. By pinging something out on the internet you get a much better idea of the actual connection quality including anything in the ISP network.
The values are stored as RRD files (round robin database) in /var/db/rrd. You could download them directly if you have something that can handle that locally.Steve
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Also - is there any way for pfSense to reset the connection if it detects a loss of WAN connectivity (to the gateway)?
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You can have it reset the firewall states if it sees a gateway as down. That's a setting in System > Advanced > Misc.
It will try to reconnect the PPPoE if it sees the session as down.
But there's no way to have it down/ip the PPP session if the gateway appears down. At least not via the gui/config.
Steve
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What would resetting the firewall states do in this case?
Hmm, the implication of your last line is - there's a way via the CLI?
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Well if you dig deep enough you can do whatever you want. You could potentially add a line to the gateway down script that restarts the PPPoE link. It would likely take some trying to get it working as you want though.
Steve
