Loosing Internet Connectivity Regularly

bab5470

For quite some time now systems behind my pfsense box have been regularly (a few times per week) been losing internet connectivity. I have been too lazy to investigate the issue - simply rebooting pfsense and the issue "resolved" itself.

I did a bit more digging this time and this is my results:

Confirmed I can still connect to the web interface on the device and SSH
Unplugged the powercord in my cable model and re-plugged it in (didn't help)
Restarted DNS resolver service (didn't help)
Restarted DHCP service (didn't help)
From SSH did an ifconfig igb0 down and ifconfig igb0 up (and internet connectivity was instantly restored)

Reviewed the system logs and I see the following:

Mar 26 07:27:22	rc.gateway_alarm	25326	>>> Gateway alarm: WAN_DHCP (Addr:69.165.232.1 Alarm:1 RTT:522.351ms RTTsd:431.819ms Loss:0%)
Mar 26 07:40:25	rc.gateway_alarm	30925	>>> Gateway alarm: WAN_DHCP (Addr:69.165.232.1 Alarm:1 RTT:1214.704ms RTTsd:1016.958ms Loss:21%)
Mar 26 07:41:19	rc.gateway_alarm	77962	>>> Gateway alarm: WAN_DHCP (Addr:69.165.232.1 Alarm:1 RTT:0.000ms RTTsd:0.000ms Loss:100%)

The NIC I'm using in the system is:

igb0@pci0:2:0:0:	class=0x020000 card=0x153315d9 chip=0x15338086 rev=0x03 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'I210 Gigabit Network Connection'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet

Has anyone else seen something like this and do you have any suggestions besides replace my network card? I'm going to see if any firmware upgrades are available for the NIC.

Thanks
Brad

badgast

I'm seeing a high RTT value ? (mine is 20 ms and a 25 ms RTTsd value)
That's only getting a bit higher when There's a lot of traffic.

Did you check / replaced the cabling ?

Raffi_

If advice about the cabling doesn't help, some more info would be helpful. What you mean by losing internet connectivity? Is DNS resolving? e.g., pinging 8.8.8.8 works, but pinging google.com doesn't? Why did you restart DHCP? Did the PC you were testing from not have a valid IP?

bab5470

I have not replaced cabling - I will try that. I didn't think to check if DNS was resolving or if DHCP was working. What made me restart DHCP is that I was seeing "??" in my network manager. I'll try to check that next time it happens. It only happens every few days. Its mostly a low level annoyance - I've just been rebooting to get around it. I just finally got fed up of rebooting.

stephenw10

Do you have a switch between the modem and pfSense?

I would expect power cycling the modem to restore the connection if ifconfig donw/up works.

Steve