my IPS (Fiber Optic) provided me with a modem/router combo. I just had them reconfigure it for what they bridge mode (but I’ve seen in the forums referred to as passthrough mode) essentially turning off its router functionality. He confirmed what I already believed to be true: I do not have a static IP address and their servers provide an IP address via DHCP.
I’ve changed the WAN setting in pfSense to use DHCP. But it’s not getting an IP address. pfSense is running in a VM on Proxmox. Here is a screenshot of the console for this VM. The WAN address is blank. I even tried setting it to STATIC and used what my current address – the IP address was listed here, but I still had no internet connection.
Within pfSense, I’ve tried setting the WAN interface to DHCP (it was set to static even though I changed it to DHCP at the console). And rebooted. Still no IP address. Then within the WAN interface, I set it from DHCP to none. Still no IP address.
I did notice that in the Gateway, it’s still set with the same IP address it had before they switched over to bridge mode. Do I need to rebuild the gateway?
I set the Gateway as disabled and tried to create a new one. But I didn’t know what to put in for the “gateway address”. Prior to activating bridge mode, the gateway was 192.168.1.1 (the LAN side address of the ISP Router) and pfSense’s WAN was set to 192.168.1.2.
Try rebooting the modem as well. That may be necessary whenever you switch from bridge to router mode or vice versa and when the MAC address of the router (i.e., the device behind the modem) changes.
I did that both after he initially switched the modem over to Bridge mode and then again after he reprovisioned it to allow for DHCP. The router DID show the new IP Address provided by DHCP. I rebooted anyway. Still no internet.
When you say: ‘Still no internet’, please be more specific about how you’re testing.
I recommend using to the commandline/console on your pfsense VM and trying to ping some numeric IP addresses, for instance google’s 8.8.8.8. This bypasses nameserver and firewall issues. Find the default gateway that was assigned by the ISP and ping that as well.
Using my laptop, I connected to the router. I get an IP address from the router. Ping 8.8.8.8 times out as unreachable. Attempts to visit ANY website times out.
Now an additional klinker that I found after my last reply:
As I walked by my Google Nest Hub (the one with the screen), I noticed that it no longer said that it had no Internet connection. So I asked it for the current weather. It told me the current weather at my home. Then I asked the Google Speaker that’s in my living room for the current weather in a neighboring city. It told me the weather there. Then I checked my Roku TV. It is able to stream TV over the Internet.
Those devices are all connected to my IoT VLAN.
My laptop is connected to the default LAN. The rules for the default LAN are unmodified from the way they were set up when I first installed pfSense. I reconnected my laptop to the IoT VLAN and it is finally able to SOMETIMES access the Internet (same tests as above). These tests fail intermittently.
I reiterate my suggestion of testing internet access from the console of your pfsense VM to confirm internet access.
I think that your router has internet (because your IOT network is operational). You now have a rules problem with your default LAN network. My guess is that the firewall is blocking (or not forwarding) the LAN traffic that’s destined for the internet. That’s a different problem.
So your IOT network has full internet, but the LAN (and router console) doesn’t… That’s weird. Couple things to try:
On the pfsense web dashboard, pull up the ‘Gateways’ widget. Does it show as ‘online’ or ‘offline’? If pfsense gateway monitoring is screwed up, that can cause problems. Some ISP’s don’t let you ping the default GW and that creates problems.
Try putting the laptop onto the IOT network and see if it gets full internet. Not a long-term solution, but it’s good to know.
I couldn’t find a “Gateways widget”. But I did go to Status>Gateways and this one is listed as Online.
As soon as I saw that the Roku had a connection, I did just that and still had no connection but the IP Address it received confirmed it was actually in the IoT VLAN.
I just rebooted my laptop then tried again. Although I was able to ping 8.8.8.8, I still no access to websites (I tried random sites to avoid just finding cached sites – such as subway.com, ipchicken.com, DuckDNS.org).
My Roku was connected to a managed switch on port 5 and my laptop was connected to port 4 (both assigned to VLAN IoT). I swapped which port they used. Roku continued streaming but laptop still had no Internet beyond pinging 8.8.8.8.
I rebooted the entire ProxMox computer. When it came back up, Roku continued streaming the channel that it was on before ProxMox rebooted. But no improvement on the laptop.
