Failing over too early
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I have a site with 2 WAN connections, Cable and DSL. The Cable is primary and the DSL is backup. There are issues with the cable at the moment that it starts dropping some packets with higher latency for a minute or two and then steadies up. The problem is that it appears to start failing over when packet loss is still low and hasn't actually gone down. We get emails saying the WANGW is down and is being omitted from the routing group at as little as 7% packet loss. The Trigger Level is set to Member Down. What else can I check?
System level is at 2.4.4_p3. Not the latest but still not that old.
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Hello!
Maybe it is the latency threshold that is causing the member to drop and not the packet loss threshold?
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/book/routing/gateway-settings.html#latency-thresholds
John
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@serbus Member Down should set it so that it only fails over on 100% Packet Loss. I'd assume that setting would be for if we select the High Latency option.
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Hello!
The description for the Member Down trigger level is, "Marks the gateway as down only when it is completely down, past one or both of the higher thresholds configured for the gateway."
The default packet loss high threshold is 20%. Even if you have set that to 100%, you should still check the latency high threshold (default 500ms) and make sure that it is not bringing the member down.
The rest of the trigger levels (Packet Loss, High Latency, Packet Loss or High Latency) all function off the low threshold.
John
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@Stewart said in Failing over too early:
I'd assume that setting would be for if we select the High Latency option.
There is no such option. It is part of the gateway monitoring (dpinger) mechanism for determining the gateway status.
I agree with @serbus . There is more than one factor which will mark a gateway as down. Packet loss is only one factor, the other is latency. If packets are taking too long to get a response, this can also cause your gateway to be marked as down.
To confirm what the actual problem is, go to
Status/System Logs/System/Gateways. What does the log there say when your gateway is marked down? You can post a screenshot and don't forget to blank out your WAN IP.
