pfSense randomly drops internet

And it happened again. Right at about the 5 hour mark. DHCP still works. Traffic graphs show that there is still a little WAN activity but I can’t ping out. I SSHed into pfSense and tried from there but couldn’t ping out. Resetting the modem worked. I’m going to look at the logs and see if I can find out anything.

Right at about the 5 hour mark. DHCP still works. Traffic graphs show that there is still a little WAN activity but I can’t ping out. 

How are you pinging? Is it by IP, or Domain name (ping 8.8.8.8 vs ping google.com)?

I tried both ways. Both were unsuccessful.

Well I configured a bare metal install this time through. I’m at about 2 hours of uptime now. I’ll update tomorrow and let you guys know if this resolved the issue. The only thing I’ve noticed is that in the virtualized setup the interface was reporting as 10gbase-t whereas in the baremetal install it is 1000baseT full-duplex.

Alright, so it did the same thing with my bare metal install. ~5 hours and then it drops. Loading into the gateway become very slow. I plugged directly into my pfSense box and had the same results. As soon as I unplug my cable modem, the webConfigurator works just fine.

The cable modem does not have this issue when hooked up to an ER-X.

Just as a test this time around I changed the interfaces so my NIC used for WAN was the built in one on the motherboard of the device.

After plugging in the modem again everything comes back up just fine. Never had to power cycle my pfSense box.

Any ideas? I just don’t understand why the webConfigurator would be affected if it seems to have an issue between the pfSense box and the modem.

I gave up a couple months ago because I got busy. I purchased the 6 port Protectli box and installed pfsense on it. I installed it yesterday afternoon and low and behold, after 5 hours I had the same exact issue.

I’m at a loss. There is some setting somewhere preventing it from renewing my WAN DHCP address.

I used a qotom(same as protectli basically) 4nic box a couple years ago with esxi 6 and a virtual pfSense box without many issues. I eventually changed it out for a USG but I’m about to change it up again. I won’t be going the virtualized route for my main gateway anymore, just hardware.

Since you’ve went through a few different setup’s I think you can rule out it being a nic issue(I’ve had those with virtualization) but it seems to me the one thing that hasn’t changed is your modem.

I guess a few questions that come to my mind is:

Have you called your provider and let them know that you are changing your equipment? Sometimes they lock to a MAC and when you change routers you have to call. I know that it works for 5 hours then goes down, so that might not be it, but reaching out to them when the problem occurs to see if they can see anything or give you any information could help.

Also your modem, can you change it for another one (Again you would have to call them and let them know there’s a change) to do some testing with? You said it had worked fine with the edge router but it’s still something I’d try and could have a bonus if you don’t own your own modem, you might be able to knock a few dollars off your monthly bill.

One other suggestion, if you’re not already doing this, just make the basic setup work, no packages, no routing, no fancy stuff just basc wan and lan with DHCP and DNS if needed and see how that runs.

Hope you get it worked out.

My ISP doesn’t lock to a MAC address so it’s pretty easy to change out routers. My modem is relatively new <1 year old and is self owned. It used to not work with their service but it was a 3.1 to 3.0 fall back issue due to the firmware they pushed out.

I’ve tried many configurations and the common denominator is pfSense. I’ll try untangle this weekend and see if it happens with it.

In the past when I had a slow GUI it was RAM. How much RAM are you giving pfsense? Also assuming you’re booting from a USB drive - is it healthy, do you have another you could try?

It’s not virtualized on the Protectli box. It had 8GB of RAM and a 120GB SSD.

In regards to the slow GUI issue in the past, rebooting the modem would resolve the issue for 5 hours. I really done think it’s a hardware issue. If I put the pfsense box behind another router it’s fine. It’s something to do with the WAN DHCP lease within pfSense. I’ve seen elsewhere where people recommend putting a dumb switch in between the modem and pfsense box. I might give that a shot.

You should be able to view resources in the RRD graphs to get an idea of whats going on. DHCP issues or not, the firewall shouldn’t come to a grinding halt. I would note the time it happens, then go look at the packets pet second / CPU load / RAM load / FW logs - see what is going on.

Well, I don’t want to be too optimistic but I’m at 5:21 of uptime. When I put Gateway tab in the Dashboard I noticed it said that it was offline. Under System>Routing>Gateway I checked the box by Gateway Action and added 1.1.1.1 as a monitor IP. I also changed the Data Payload from 0 to 1. Applied that configuration. Under Interfaces>WAN I rejected leases from 192.168.100.1. I’ve done this step in the past but I figured that it couldn’t hurt.

EDIT: It stayed up through the night. Almost 15 hours of uptime!