Unable to ping certain hosts

[xyz1234]

I have a very basic pfsense setup with everything on one subnet. For some reason, certain devices (macbook pro 14' and iPhone 12 pro) experience intermittent drops in traffic. These tend to only be minor annoyances because it happens randomly throughout the day and tends to resolve itself within a second.

The biggest issue is that there is a specific device that is occasionally reachable by certain devices on the subnet, but not others (android phone). Basically, I can ping the device from a device and it will randomly work. Other times it randomly says "host is down". However, there is another device on my network that I ssh into that is always consistently able to reach that device (even when the others are unable).

Basically: All devices in same subnet: 192.168.55.0/24. All hosts have static entries assigned.
192.168.55.10 -> can reach 192.168.55.8
192.168.25.11 -> cannot reach 192.168.55.8
192.168.25.11 > can reach 192.168.55.10

There seem to be no logs related to this in the pfsense firewall or in tcpdump on the local machine when this occurs. Does anyone have any idea why this is happening? The issue seems to happen randomly and lasts for several hours and will randomly resolve itself.

I have tried this exact setup on multiple other routers and only pfsense seems to have issues.

[stephenw10]

@xyz1234 said in Unable to ping certain hosts:

192.168.25.11 -> cannot reach 192.168.55.8
192.168.25.11 > can reach 192.168.55.10

I assume that's a typo and that device should be 192.168.55.11?

That traffic does not go through pfSense at all, it cannot block it.

'Host is down' implies the target is not responding to ARP which is at layer 2.

I assume some of those devices are wifi connected? Check the Access Point for a client isolation setting.

Steve

[xyz1234]

@stephenw10 yep those are typos. Sorry about that!

And yes the android phone and MacBook Pro are both connected to wifi. I didn’t think to look at the AP settings yet so I’ll check that. Thanks!

[xyz1234]

Hm so it looks like none of the client isolation settings can be enabled when it is in AP mode. But I'll keep an eye on the AP if it happens again.