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    Intermittent Internet troubleshooting

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    30 Posts 8 Posters 5.9k Views
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    • X Offline
      xman111
      last edited by

      Hey guys, have the internet randomly going down on my setup and just wondering what I can do to troubleshoot it.

      I just bought a brand new i5 with a GIGABYTE GA-H170N-WIFI motherboard, 16gb of Ram, an Intel SSD drive, and a Intel dual gigabit PCIe network card, so I didn't skimp on the hardware.  I am using the onboard igb0 for Wan and em0 for Lan connected to a Cisco gigabit switch on 2.2.6.

      Randomly I will sit down at my computer and have the yellow exclamation mark by the networking icon stating that there is no internet.  I can open putty or get into the router using the web interface, both work fine.  I try to ping to 8.8.8.8 through putty or the web interface and both get 100 percent packet loss, no return packets so I assume the internet is down.  I looked in the system logs and cannot see anything at all.  Also a reboot of PFsense will get things back up until the next time it goes down.  Last time it was up for about 20 hours.

      How do I go about troubleshooting this?  it is very frustrating, especially since I didn't cheap out and my system is very simple at this point, haven't even added OpenVPN or anything. Just want to get things stable before I complicate it any more.  I have also turned off gateway monitoring as I had issues with that on my old system.  CPU and Ram usage is always only at a couple percent.

      Any help would be VERY much appreciated.

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      • X Offline
        xman111
        last edited by

        Just went down again after 1 hour 9 minutes.

        Rebooted and router hung on Wan configuration during boot for about 2 minutes.  Continued booting and didn't get a WAN address. Had to shut down router, power cycle my switch and cable modem.  Booted normally and got a WAN ip after that.

        This sucks!  Need some help from the networking pros :)

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        • M Offline
          moikerz
          last edited by

          Try eliminating your onboard NIC. Use the second port on your Intel NIC.

          Make sure your network cable is good, factory-crimped stuff.

          Gateway monitoring (apinger) is still broken. Don't bother using it (for now).

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          • X Offline
            xman111
            last edited by

            just went down again.  gateway monitoring disabled,  changed cable,  and will try both Intel add on nics.

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            • X Offline
              xman111
              last edited by

              moved it around so that the Wan is em1 and Lan is em0 on the Intel addon card.  Not sure if I mentioned this in my first post but the onboard NIC is also Intel, igb0.

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              • X Offline
                xman111
                last edited by

                still went down.. pulled the dual Intel nic and replace with a single Intel nic. So now running onboard Intel nic for Wan and Addon card for LAN.  Running like 10 instances of youtube and Netflix and it seems to be running smooth so far.. I really hope it was the dual card.

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                • X Offline
                  xman111
                  last edited by

                  went down again. Had like 10 youtube and netflix sessions going, was working great.

                  Anyone have any ideas for me?  i am about to abandon Pfsense all together, sheesh.

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                  • X Offline
                    xman111
                    last edited by

                    I feel like I'm talking with myself :)

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                    • L Offline
                      lorio
                      last edited by

                      @xman111:

                      still went down.. pulled the dual Intel nic and replace with a single Intel nic. So now running onboard Intel nic for Wan and Addon card for LAN.  Running like 10 instances of youtube and Netflix and it seems to be running smooth so far.. I really hope it was the dual card.

                      Did you try flipping bot interface? Use add-on for WAN and LAN onboard?

                      How about when you had your dual card did the traffic went on it for both wan and lan?

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                      • X Offline
                        xman111
                        last edited by

                        I did.  I tried all configs.  one Intel nic on board isn't supported by 2.2.6 so I updated to 2.3 as it is supported.  so now I am runnin. 2.3 with no add on card in the PCIe slot,  2 built in Intel cards. I am really running out of options.  I use and need 3 cards in my setup so I will see what happens with this. . very frustrating.

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                        • L Offline
                          lorio
                          last edited by

                          I am not the one with the most extensive experience in pfsense but if you could show some logs I'm sure more advanced users could chip in…

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                          • X Offline
                            xman111
                            last edited by

                            that's the weird part,  the logs say nothing.

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                            • L Offline
                              lorio
                              last edited by

                              What is your WAN connected to? Could the problem be with that?

                              You said you upgraded from 2.2.6. Have you tried saving.your settings and do a clean install of 2.3?

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                              • X Offline
                                xman111
                                last edited by

                                i switched the WAN to pretty much every NIC i had.  I just did a fresh install of 2.3 and everything is working for now but before it took sometimes minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes  days to go down.  have my fingers crossed.  I was just hoping to get some trouble shooting techniques to try to figure WTF is happening. My kids are killing me with the internet going up and down all day long :)

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                                • ? This user is from outside of this forum
                                  Guest
                                  last edited by

                                  Is 2.3 available now. I only see 2.2.6.

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                                  • X Offline
                                    xman111
                                    last edited by

                                    it is just a snap shot,  not the full supported release.

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                                    • X Offline
                                      xman111
                                      last edited by

                                      back to screwed again.. Can't believe how unstable this is.  I thought that 2.3 fixed the problem.  Internet just goes down, only way to get it back up is a reboot.  NOTHING in the logs at all.  WTF can I do to fix this?  I want to chuck the whole thing out the f'n window.

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                                      • jahonixJ Offline
                                        jahonix
                                        last edited by

                                        And your WAN is what: DHCP, PPPoE, static - all that connected to a switch/modem/router/…  ?

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                                        • X Offline
                                          xman111
                                          last edited by

                                          wan is dhcp, connected directly to Nic.  then Lan nic connected to small 5 port switch.  haven't even got openVPN setup yet,  trying to keep it very simple to get it stable.

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                                          • ? Offline
                                            A Former User
                                            last edited by

                                            You mentioned Netflix and video so understand this may be a total stab in the dark but check this post out.
                                            https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=109323.0

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