Dead time while streaming
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Hello,
I need some help for troubleshouting a network traffic issue.
I have a pfsense firewall (2.5.2-RELEASE (amd64 - GX-412TC SOC) - FreeBSD 12.2-STABLE) cascaded behind a Fritzbox Cable 6660 -> WAN I/F of pfsense.
On LAN I/F I have 2 VLAN for seperated private and guest connectivity to internet and local components like printer, ...
Before I had a Vodafone station instead of the Fritzbox and everything seemed to work stable ...
... but now I have unregular dead times of several seconds which lead to big issues for streaming, gaming etc:
I know that so far I have provided very poor backround information but first of all I need some idea of what could cause the issue and how to start up with the troubleshoouting.
First of all: How can I check if the route cause is the pfsense or the fritzbox router
(first guess was the fritzbox but beside the firewall at least the ping to the internet looks stable during the deadtime - behind the firewall notWould be nice to get some help how to find out what is the reason and finally solve the issue ;-)
Thanks in advance ...
Cheers Migo -
Do you see that for all traffic through the firewall?
If you start a ping to, say, 8.8.8.8 from a client behind pfSense does that drop out for 10s at the same time?
Do you see packet loss in the pfSense WAN monitoring? Is it still monitoring the gateway IP directly?
Steve
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Hello Steve,
thanks for starting the troubkleshoot.
Ping to www.google.de behind firewall drops during dead timeWhat do you mean with "packet loss in the pfSense WAN monitoring"?
-> this is what we see in the attached picture?How can I monitor the IP gateway from pfsense?
-> just checked the fritzbox monitoring directly ...Cheers
Migo -
pfSense monitors the WAN connectivity by pinging an upsteam host. By default that is the gateway IP. You can see it in Status > Gateways.
You can see the historical data in Status > Monitoring by selecting the 'Quality' graph.If that is not showing outages you can try setting a different IP to monitor. In System > Routing > Gateways edit the WAN gateway and set an external IP such as 8.8.8.8.
Then you will see where the failure is happening.
Steve
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Hello Steve,
seems we are on the right track.
There is a data loss in the history of the connection to the gateway (which is here the fritzbox)
shown in the weekly and daily history graph:
Last day:
I would interprete it that the connection to the gateway is instable from time to time.
But what could be the reason???
Do you have any idea or any further steps for investigation?Thanks so far ;-)
Cheers Migo -
By the way (further outcome of the quality graph investigation):
The paket loss starts exactly the day I replaced the vodafone station by the fritzbox.
But as I told in the first post I have a Linux VM in the WAN net where the ping to google stays stable ... -
If it's still monitoring the gateway IP it could just be loss to the gateway which is OK as long as it's till passing traffic. The gateway may not prioritise ping responses.
If you set the monitoring IP to 8.8.8.8 do you see more loss? Big gaps with 100% loss matching what you see when streaming?
Steve
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Maybe it is a problem wit the link to your Fritz!Box.
At first I would change the network cable.
In your Fritz!Box is there an option for energy saving on the LAN ports?
Disable that if you have the option.Manually setting the speed of your WAN port to 1 Gbit/s could also be worth a try.
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Hi Steve,
I am now monitoring 8.8.8.8 as suggested and I can see the loss exactly matching the stream break.
Ping to google behind the firewall is also down in that period.
But no ping loss from the Linux VM in WAN.Any idea?
Thanks and cheers
Migo -
Some more information:
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What was it monitoring before where you were seeing less/no loss?
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As you can see the internet router change was on 03.12.2021:
Before no loss - after arbitrary failures ...
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Right but I assume it was monitoring the gateway at that time, what is the gateway? Some public IP upstream? The Fritzbox directly?
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Right, at that time it was the gateway with local IP
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So it was the private internal IP on the Fitzbox?
That implies it seeing loss across the Fritzbox if so.... -
That's why I suggested changing the network cable.
There could be a bad contact and the interface is losing connection and renegotiating the speed. -
Hello,
this morning I changed the LAN port at the FritzBox for the pfsense firewall and up to now it seems to be stable ...
... I will further monitor and test if this really solved the issue.
Thanks a lot for your help and constructive hints - I will keep you informed if we can close the thread ;-)
Thanks and cheers
Migo -
Hello,
after changing the LAN port at the FritzBox the network and the internet connection stays stable.
Issue solved ;-)
Thanks a lot ...
Cheers Migo
