Need some pointers for troubleshooting WAN connection

[astana]

I'm in the process of moving over from a windows server to pfSense as our gateway server.
I've installed pfSense with 2 NIC's both of which seem to function correctly.
I've set up the external interface using the same parameters as my windows box currently uses, IP address, Gateway address and net mask.
I've also attached the same cables from the windows pc to the pfSense one, and tried the gateway Ethernet directly into the pfSense box.
However I'm getting no traffic at all from the WAN interface, even though the dashboard shows the status as up, and is showing outgoing requests. It's not the firewall as stats show no packets dropped.

Our internet comes through wiMax which then converts directly to Ethernet.

Does anyone have some pointers where I could look to try and understand why with the same IP configuration I'm not getting any WAN connection.

[phil.davis]

I have WiMax at 1 site. The ISP provided an antenna unit on the roof, with a routing device "built-in" and ethernet cable down to the office. It provided a local private IP subnet on the ethernet cable (e.g. 10.20.1.0/24) with DHCP. I connected the pfSense WAN and set it to DHCP, it got an IP address like 10.20.1.100/24 and gateway 10.20.1.1. After that everything ran fine.
The ISP device had no settings for bridge mode, so pfSense is NATing to the 10.20.1.0/24 subnet, then the ISP device NATs also out to the internet. But it works.
Can you ping the gateway address?
Give some more details. Are you being given a public or private address?…

[astana]

It's a public IP address:
195.189.XX.66

On our server the NIC IP address is 195.189.XX.65
with gateway at .66
Netmask is 255.255.255.252 so /30

I did try DHCP but that didn't work either. I'm next at work next week and I'll run some more tests then. The only problem is I need to bring down the internet to get pfSense working, so I'm quite limited timewise to do tests :/

I can't remember if I could ping the gateway or not, I'll repost with further info next test.

[stephenw10]

Could be the wimax device is locked to a single MAC address like some cable modems. In that case you can spoof the WAN MAC to match your windows box or retrain the wimax box somehow.

It could also be a cable issue. Since you are using a static IP (right?) on WAN there is no evidence of any connectivity other than the interface status showing 'up'. Are either end of the connection Gigabit? If you run 'ifconfig' what dopes the WAN NIC show?

Steve

[astana]

Just to add some more information before taking down the internet to try your ideas out.

The network cards installed (both WAN and LAN) are TP-LINK TG-3269
http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?model=TG-3269#spec

I'll edit this post once I've done my tests.

Ok, it was very simple!

It was the NIC that for some reason wasn't liked WAN side even though LAN was happy  ???

I swapped the WAN to the onboard NIC and it all started working.

Thanks for the pointers and ideas on where to search, much appreciated.

Now onto setting up this beast!