Comcast gateways not responding to ping

[jhg]

pfSense uses pings (icmp echo-request) to the gateway to determine gateway status.

It appears that Comcast is configuring their gateways to not respond to echo-request, which makes them appear DOWN in the admin interface. The gateways are up and providing router-advertisement packets, just not responding to echo-request.

For a while this problem only affected IPv4. I did a traceroute and discovered that the next hop host after the gateway would respond to ping, so I configured that as the monitor address. At that time the IPv6 gateway was responding to ping.

Now they've disabled echo-reply on the IPv6 gateway.

What is the "correct" way to deal with this? Is my traceroute solution appropriate, or should I be doing something else?

[skogs]

For years instead of the comcast router for gateway up detection I use their v6 DNS server.
2001:558:feed::2 or 2001:558:feed::1

As I had to set IPv6 to DNS server for monitoring...I also use their IPv4 DNS servers for the same. System - Routing - Gateways - Edit ... 75.75.76.76 and the 2001:558:feed::2 have worked swimingly. I don't use those servers for actual DNS...but it proves that my local routers and equipment are up and that I can reach the core of their public services ok.

(edited for clarity)