Internet routing stability problems
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@thatguy said in Internet routing stability problems:
I'm thinking it has something to do with your ISP. I have almost the exact same problem with a Carrier Grade NAT ISP in my area. Any client I manage that has a pfSense appliance and using the same ISP has the issue as well.
It has been suggested before, and when it was, the term voodoo-engineering sprang to mind. Only briefly, until I realized people on this forum are experts, not banging rocks together.
So this morning my connection dropped again. I was in an on-line meeting, so I noticed immediately. And I was unable to quickly fix it with the usual release/renew-cycle. So I came up with a second work-around, which seems to work.
There is one solution and one workaround.
Solution: Call your ISP and request a static IP. You will most likely have to pay more for it monthly.
That is a possibility, but my ISP requires me to upgrade my consumer plan to a business plan for that. Not only does that double the costs, it also comes with business terms and conditions that don't need to adhere to all kinds of consumer protections.
Next year our village will have a glass fiber network, and I'll kick the cable modem anyway. So I'm not going to commit to a whole year for a new plan. Hopefully the fiber provider will do better.
Though I do think this is something we need to understand. What is it exactly what they do to throw off the best router in the world? Are they violating the protocol? And how can pfSense be hardened against that? It seems to be hardened against nearly anything else...
Workaround: Make a script to periodically ping the Gateway. Once it fails the script will automatically disable and then re-enable your pfSense WAN. Here is the post on how to create that script.
However, I run it every minute instead of every five minutes through Cron.
Well, I am a Linux software developer, so this is something I could do, but I'm a bit lazy, so I came up with something else. Something we did 20+ yeas ago, when cable modems and ISPs didn't have their stuff in order:
I have taken the DHCP dynamically allocated IP v4 address, mask and gateway, and I have configured it as a static IP configuration in pfSense. That'll teach them!I know they don't like that, and it can cause IP conflicts down the line, but I've had the same IP address for years, so I'm sure I can ride it out until our fiber connection is here. And since they seem to violate the protocol, I'm feeling free to do so too ;-).
Anyway; Static configuration brought back my connection immediately, while many release/renew-cycles a moment before did not. So there must be something DHCP at play. I will report back here if the problem persists, but I have good hope, since it cured the problem so quickly.