PFSense Gateway Shows Down After ISP Upgrade

Networking & Firewalls
1

Hi,

Comcast/Xfinity just did an upgrade in my area, which caused my internet to be down for a few hours. When it came back online my main IP4 gateway showed as down with 100% packet loss and PFSense was not letting anything through the gateway. I finally figured out that it was due to the new default gateway not returning a ping and so I added 1.1.1.1 to the Monitoring IP for the gateway. The gateway immediately went back up and the problem was solved.

Is it common for a ISP default gateway to not return a ping and should I plan on using 1.1.1.1 as a permanent solution? If it works it works, but I am curious if people normally use a manual Monitoring IP for their configs.

Thanks

2

It’s not best practice to disable ping for a gateway but Comcast is not know for doing things that are best practice. Using 1.1.1.1 as an alternative is fine, but in the unlikely event that 1.1.1.1 goes down your system will assume everything is down. If this concerns you then disable gateway monitoring.

1 Like
3

Thanks. That makes sense. I appreciate the reply.