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    Suddenly unable to connect to random websites

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    13 Posts 4 Posters 4.6k Views
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    • X
      XIII
      last edited by

      like submicron said: mtu
      this issue is most likely always an mtu issue

      -Chris Stutzman
      Sys0:2.0.1: AMD Sempron 140 @2.7 1024M RAM 100GHD
      Sys1:2.0.1: Intel P4 @2.66 1024M RAM 40GHD
      freedns.afraid.org - Free DNS dynamic DNS subdomain and domain hosting.
      Check out the pfSense Wiki

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      • J
        JustinHoMi
        last edited by

        I set the mtu to 1390, and it didn't resolve the issue.

        I noticed that a traceroute to each of these trouble domains ends at in about 5 hops at the upstream provider. I gave them a call, and they were able to duplicate the issue… so their engineers are looking into it.

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        • X
          XIII
          last edited by

          like i said most of the time it is an mtu issue. glad you found the problem. did you perform a tracert before changing mtu?

          -Chris Stutzman
          Sys0:2.0.1: AMD Sempron 140 @2.7 1024M RAM 100GHD
          Sys1:2.0.1: Intel P4 @2.66 1024M RAM 40GHD
          freedns.afraid.org - Free DNS dynamic DNS subdomain and domain hosting.
          Check out the pfSense Wiki

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          • J
            JustinHoMi
            last edited by

            Yeah, I did perform the tracert before changing the mtu, but not afterwards. If the upstream provider doesn't find a problem, then I'll try again.

            Out of curiosity… if it is an MTU issue, why would it suddenly happen? These websites all worked a few days ago.

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            • ?
              Guest
              last edited by

              MTU issues typically crop up suddenly due to ISP changes.  I've seen these issues suddenly appear for no good reason only to find that the ISP in question did a major backbone upgrade.  Glad you found your issue, however.

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              • J
                JustinHoMi
                last edited by

                Oh, I haven't found the issue yet. The ISP was able to duplicate the problem, but neither I nor they know exactly what is causing it. They haven't gotten back in touch with me yet. I may mess around with changing the MTU again today. What is an acceptable range for the MTU?

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                • X
                  XIII
                  last edited by

                  it depends on what you are using (ethernet, wireless,jumbo frames etc) but heres a breakdown:
                  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_transmission_unit and http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1191
                  though for most it is either 1492 or 1500

                  -Chris Stutzman
                  Sys0:2.0.1: AMD Sempron 140 @2.7 1024M RAM 100GHD
                  Sys1:2.0.1: Intel P4 @2.66 1024M RAM 40GHD
                  freedns.afraid.org - Free DNS dynamic DNS subdomain and domain hosting.
                  Check out the pfSense Wiki

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                  • J
                    JustinHoMi
                    last edited by

                    Well, I tried a bunch of different MTU's on the WAN interface between 1000 and 1500, but no luck. This client has SDSL 1.1/1.1.

                    If the MTU is set in pfSense, would it make any difference to try setting it on the DSL modem also, since the traffic is all going through the pfSense router?

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                    • X
                      XIII
                      last edited by

                      is the dsl modem doing the authentication or is pfsense? if the modem is bridged it should only have to be done in pfsense

                      -Chris Stutzman
                      Sys0:2.0.1: AMD Sempron 140 @2.7 1024M RAM 100GHD
                      Sys1:2.0.1: Intel P4 @2.66 1024M RAM 40GHD
                      freedns.afraid.org - Free DNS dynamic DNS subdomain and domain hosting.
                      Check out the pfSense Wiki

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                      • J
                        JustinHoMi
                        last edited by

                        I talked to the upstream provider again. It looks like we discovered a system-wide outage.

                        It's a lot more fun when I have control over the situation!

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                        • stephenw10S
                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                          last edited by

                          Sounds a lot like the expected symptoms of IPv6 'brokeness'  ::)

                          Steve

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