How to debug WAN connection dropping
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I have a ZimaBoard running pfSense 2.7.2 community edition.
This works fine most of the time but then ... the WAN connection drops and I have to reboot the pfSelse to get it going again - I THINK that high traffic is the trigger.
The WAN connection is PPPoE through a modern (or whatever the optical version is called) and then over 1Gb fibre.
I have tried turning the modem off and on - no difference.
I have tried disabling and enabling the WAN port with pfSense - no difference.
Any suggestions for further investigation?
I have looked at the System Logs for PPP but don't really understand what it is saying.
Thanks in advance.
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Do you see watchdog timeout errors for the Realtek NICs in the system logs?
Steve
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Hi Steve, thanks for getting back to me and for the quick response.
I have gone to "Status / System Logs / System / General" and searched for the term "timeout" and the only thing that I get is:
Jul 18 01:09:21 kernel re0: link state changed to DOWN Jul 18 01:09:21 kernel re0: watchdog timeoutI am not 100% sure if this is around the time of a hang. Please let me know if I am looking in the wrong place.
The ZimaBoard has 2 NIC, but only the WAN NIC seems to fail. I say this because I can still log into the UI and see what is going on when a hang occurs, so I am guessing that the LAN NIC is ok.
I know that these Realtek NICs can be problematic on BSD, but my understanding is that if I set "Disable hardware checksum offload" then I should be ok. Which I have.
Obviously, I'm happy to be corrected.
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Ok, that's the problem. You need to use the alternative Realtek driver by loading the kmod pkg at the command line like:
https://forum.netgate.com/post/1171234 -
@stephenw10 Thanks very much for that.
I did the upgrade and have not had the issue since.
I did try looking for instructions on how to do this, but Google was not very helpful with the terms that I used.
Either way, thanks again for the help.
