Now each time i feel the need to restart the server, the lan connection drops just before it's fully booted , so the link is marked down.

So I have to reconfigure all physical connections. I assumed it was due to one of the addons I installed , so I reverted the system back to default. Same thing. Then i did a reinstall. Same thing.

I then reverted the switch ( cisco 2900-xl-en ) to " dummy " thinking it was a config issue, same thing. I removed the switch entirely still no change. Used a different machine to access pfsense. Same.

Considering pfsense was running just fine, I changed the nic for the lan and wan , reconfigured , still the same thing .

Seems it must be hardware failure somewhere. Any suggestions ?

thanks, rick