Upgraded from 2.4.3.? to 2.4.4p2 (now p3) sporadic loss of network WAN

[rbuckland]

Hi,

I have just updated the 2.4.4p2 to 2.4.4p3. (in hope that my problem disappears).

My issues started, right after I upfraded from 2.4.3 to 2.4.4. I ran 2.4.3 stable with no issues; better part of 12 months.
I have pinned down the failure, to something in 2.4.4.

Setup
PFSense Physical box (Laptop) - Dell
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8700 @ 2.53GHz - 8G RAM
128GB SSD
Physical NIC to Cisco Switch (LAN side)
USB NIC to Cable Model in Bridge Mode - DHCP (WAN - Optus Aussie Provider)

Issue
Every so often (1 hour, 1 day, it varies) - the WAN side drops off. only DNS resolves (pn pfsense
SSH into the pfsense, command line and {dig www.google.com} still works, but no connectivity.
If I reboot pfSense, it all comes good again - and the "wait continues" until it fails again.

I also noticed, if I switch off the Cable modem .. and switch back on again, that too resets the "fault"
(but that is a walk downstairs to the "comms" room :-) )

The WAN side always shows as up "green arrow", on the status page.
I set the monitoring, of the WAN gateway to ping 8.8.8.8 - but the ping always works also :-(

Question
What do I look for to find out what it is that is failing ? how do I begin to debug this ?
Something has changed since 2.4.3 .. and yes I noticed a loft of dhclient issues (https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/8507)

My current plan
0. add in some extra monitoring somewhere ..
1. see if the upgrade to 2.4.4p3 fixes it (upgraded - good for the past 30 minutes)
2. rollback to 2.4.3<something> if it doesn't
3. roll-forward to 2.5.?

Could I have some suggestions please ?

[JeGr]

@rbuckland said in Upgraded from 2.4.3.? to 2.4.4p2 (now p3) sporadic loss of network WAN:

0. add in some extra monitoring somewhere ..

That for sure. I'd go and set up a small VM or server/raspi/whatever to not only ping an external source but also add 2-3 other checks as in Ping, DNS, File get / File Put (via sftp for example)
Also check if your cable modem has a status site you can call.

That's some strange error, that would let out ping and dns but nothing else.