WAN "loss" question
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Here's a pic of my system logs:
What does "loss" mean in WAN1 and WAN2? My gateway groups are set to "member down". What is its difference if I set it to "packet loss"?
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"loss" implies some packet loss on that interface. Enough to trigger the alarm threshold, 10% by default I think.
I need some clarification on this because having read through the docs and the comments in the code I'm still unsure however…
I belive that if you set your gateway group to "member down" then it it won't be excluded from the group until it is marked as down by apinger. This only happens if it reaches either of the second apinger thresholds, 20% packet loss or 500ms delay by default.
Presumably, though I have not seen this happen, if you have it set to "packet loss" the connection would be excluded from that group at the first threshold.I'd love to be corrected on this or confirmed. :-\
Steve
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But both of my WAN interfaces are working fine and never saw them marked as "offline" or removed from the group. Is packet loss normal?
Also, when I change something under Routing tab and press apply changes and looked at the system logs, I also see "php: : Gateways status could not be determined, considering all as up/active." What does it mean?
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Packet loss can happen if your connection heavily loaded, if it's not causing you a problem then I wouldn't worry about it too much.
If you add the gateways widget to the dashboard you can see the packetloss and delay in near real time and test with a few downloads. If you have a 'bad' connection you can set the thresholds higher.The gateways status message appears after you have reloaded something in pfSense, after a config change for example. It's nothing to worry about it simply means that it's not been running long enough to correctly determine the status. I think! ;)
Steve
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Thanks for the info :)
Regarding widgets, how do you download and install them?
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Click on the '+' symbol at the top left of the dashboard and select the widget you require.
Steve
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Got it. Thanks!
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One more thing, so the "member down" setting would be the most preferred from the 4 choices if all is well in my Internet connection?
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This is where I'm unsure. :-
My guess is that "member down" is most fault tolerant, it will continue to use a slightly flaky connection.
If you have some application that is very sensitive to latency or packetloss, like VOIP for example, you might want to have connections excluded from a group at the first sign of a problem. In that case you would use one of the other settings.Steve
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RRD Graphs and ther ethe tab "quality" will help you know, how high the latency and the poacket loss was when the gateway went down.
so you can adjust the low and high watermark. -
Using "member down" would only stop using a WAN if the link is lost on the port.
Most WAN failures do not result in a loss of link on the physical port - the loss is upstream somewhere (like on the other end of your modem/CPE). You want "Packet Loss or High Latency" in almost all cases.
If your WAN tends to be a bit lossy, as my Cable line is, even when it works fine, you can adjust the parameters that trigger the alarm under the individual gateway. So go to System > Routing, edit the gateway for WAN, and in the Advanced settings, increase the Packet Loss thresholds. For my Cable interface I have to use 20/35 or so.
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But in that case, high latency would be a problem for me since the latency increases when I download using Newsgroups. Is there a way to change the latency threshold as well?
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But in that case, high latency would be a problem for me since the latency increases when I download using Newsgroups. Is there a way to change the latency threshold as well?
Yes, the setting is in the same place. Edit the gateway, under the advanced settings there are tweaks there for the latency, loss, etc.
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But in that case, high latency would be a problem for me since the latency increases when I download using Newsgroups. Is there a way to change the latency threshold as well?
Yes, the setting is in the same place. Edit the gateway, under the advanced settings there are tweaks there for the latency, loss, etc.
@jimp
What is the default value for "Down" ?
Could it be possible to enter the default values in the description for future snapshots ? -
I don't recall the defaults, you can check /var/etc/apinger.conf to see what's there.
Having them in the description would be handy.
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Thanks for the info.
