Intermittent Connection Issues - pfsense & uverse router nvg589
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PROBLEM: For some reason my internet connection seems to intermittently drop out. The internet works fine for a day, or two or more, then it drops out. I believe it might be something to do with a setting issue either with the ATT router or pfSense or both.
HISTORY: About 45 days ago I ordered att verse internet (had no choice, only provider available for my apartment). Since the install, ATT has been here about 5 times. They have sent techs to replace the router, change the port from their access point, and even rewire cables in the apartment. They ran numerous tests and the “line” in the apartment is now “clean” according to them. In fact, so good that I pay for 18mbps and I get around 30mbps!
HARDWARE: ATT Uverse router NVG589 (which I think is not the best, but decent) and a pfSense box running version 2.1.5-RELEASE (i386) FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE-p16 on and Intel Atom CPU D2500 @ 1.86GHz. CPU usage: 0.00, Memory Usage 6%, SWAP usage 0% and Disk Usage 1%.
CURRENT SETUP: The ATT router I sends the internet into the WAN port on my pfSense. Then from the pfSense I plug into a 8 port Netgear switch which feeds a host of things (my mac laptop, printer, FreeNAS server, IPMI, and Apple Time Capsule. The Time capsule which is in another room then feeds my Sony TV and Apple TV. The Time Capsule is set to produce a wireless network called “Guest”.
The ATT router comes in on 192.168.1.247
The pfSense router creates new network address for all devices at 192.168.5.XXXSETTINGS: I don’t have a static IP address from ATT. I changed the ATT router as a IP Passthrough with DHCPS-fixed and set to the MAC address of the pfSense box. This (should) lets my pfSense provide the DHCP addresses. I’ve had the pfSense for about 1 year now without any major changes and it has worked flawlessly up until my recent move. I also run a OpenVPN which I had to reconfigure once I moved to my new place due to the new ip address, etc.
WHAT I THINK MAY BE THE PROBLEM: I’m really a noob when it comes to understanding DHCPs, Passthorughs, etc. I think the issue might be some setting which is not “renewing” the leases to each of the devices connected to the pfSense. Thus causing the drop off of the internet. I don’t know if problem can be solved by increasing the “Passthrough DHCP Lease” time. I’m not really sure what to do and as a result I don’t want to change any more settings because I don’t want to mess up things even more!
Any help would be great. This is one of those situations where while the internet is working (intermittently), and if I make a change based on recommendations from the forum, it would be difficult to verify whether the change actually fixed the issue until the next time this happens again. I originally thought this might only be a ATT router issue, but recently I’m thinking this might be more of a setting issue in pfSense because sometime I restart only the pfSense and the internet seems to work properly again. Thank you for your help in advance!!!!