Netgate 1537, connection craps out after 5 minutes.

noreast-it

Hello to my fellow forum users,

Our router basically died last Wednesday (12-17-2025). Around lunch all users started reporting incredibly slow or no internet connection.

We have had the occasional issue with our used Juniper switch so I rebooted the switch. After the reboot, the connection seemed to be fine, ran a couple of speed tests everything looked great.

Returned to what I was working on, at the back of the building. I hadn't even climbed back up the ladder, when a VIP tracked me down in the back of the building to tell me that their connection was down again. Checked a nearby computer, everyone was down... Not just the VIP.

Returned to the server room, connected to the console of the Netgate 1537, able to ping by IP and domain name > Decided to reboot the router, the router froze and I had to hold the power button before it shutdown. This has happened before, holding the power button to force a shutdown worked then and appeared to work now.

After the reboot, ping by IP and domain worked, checked a speedtest looked good. Stayed at my computer (fool me once shame on me, etc.) started a ping to the router IP, 1kb in size. After a few minutes started to see timeouts, after a few more minutes the timeouts were 1 in 3 and all users were reporting no or slow connection again. This is a production router so cut back all traffic to a minimum (disconnected the APs that provide the majority of our devices a connection), connection continued to be slow for direct wired users right to the end of the day.

After 5pm, once all users went home, reset the router and reloaded a recent saved config.

Immediately after reboot, the connection was good, with in 5 minutes it was bad with ping timeouts,

Updated the FW to most recent release as of Dec. 10, 2025 - 25.11> Immediately after reboot, the connection was good, within 5 minutes it was bad with ping timeouts.

Downloaded the FW installer from the Netgate store. Attempted to load the most recent version - 25.11 (don't do this, the interface detection never completes and you cannot connect to the router).

Loaded the previous version 25.07.01 using the FW installer, the interface connection completed and I was able to login. Restored the most recent config backup > Immediately after reboot, the connection was good, within 5 minutes it was bad with ping timeouts.

Loaded the previous version 25.07.01 using the FW installer, able to login. Did not restore the config, configured with a basic connection to a backup ISP. > Immediately after reboot, the connection was good, within 5 minutes it was bad with ping timeouts. At this point there was only one device directly connected to the 1537, my laptop which was sending 1kb pings.

Perhaps the issue was onboard NIC controller related? Reset the router to clear the configuration, and changed the physical connections and Netgate config to use an add-on card that has been lightly used for connecting the backup ISP > Immediately after reboot, the connection was good, within 5 minutes it was bad with ping timeouts.

Soooo.... What else can I do? Before I shutdown the router I could see that SMART reported that the disk was fine. There were also failed to load to memory errors (for some Firewall rules) before I stopped using the backup config, but when I setup the router with a basic config - they went away.

Any Ideas would be appreciated, I have already updated the FW (from 2.0c to 2.6) for the Supermicro Motherboard - successfully, as part of my troubleshooting.

Thank you,

David B.

SteveITS

@noreast-it Did you test pinging/packet loss from pfSense itself? If WAN monitoring gateway action is enabled (the default) that can take WAN down if there is sufficient packet loss.

RAM and CPU usage should show in the dashboard, or top, or Diagnostics> System Activity.

noreast-it

@SteveITS
WAN monitoring was enabled until I stopped reloading the saved config. There was no packet loss until my pinging of the gateway started to timeout. Once the gateway started to show packet loss internally, the WANs also started to show packet loss.

CPU usage hovered around 6%, Memory usage at 30%. The memory errors did go away after I stopped using the saved config. They were for a firewall rule that no longer applied.

Thank you for your response.

tinfoilmatt

There's not enough information here for anyone to provide any meaningful specific advice. But I'd recommend thoroughly auditing your entire configuration. Firewall and NAT rulesets. Packages in use and their respective configs. All of it.

noreast-it

@tinfoilmatt
Hello,
I understand... my previous (was running just fine until last week config) has not been loaded to the Netgate 1537. The device is currently configured with the most basic WAN settings (DHCP) and LAN settings (DHCP) with all other settings at default.

I remembered that once upon a time I had hardware lag issues that manifested as high ping times that eventually became timeouts. Which I was able to troubleshoot using an HP diagnostic tool.

There is a Supermicro diagnostic tool, which is obtainable from them: SuperDiag_1.11.0_20251106_For_X86.

A short test, showed that the SSD failed. Just ran a "full" test targeting the storage device in the hope that I might get a more specific error.

Failed again, error remains: SSD Drive Self-test error detected.
Code: 20420806

I guess I need a new SSD, before continuing