topic Re: PFSense Connection Issues in My Router

PFSense Connection Issues

ALancashireLad — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:22:53 GMT

Hi All, Ive just moved back to plusnet FTTC (openreach have told me that I should have FTTP available in a couple of months) from VM

My plusnet Hub2 connects to the internet without any problems in router mode

However my My home network runs on PFSense I dug out my old HG612 modem and configured my PFSense WAN port for PPPoE entered my plusnet username and password as far as I understand I don't need to enter or change anything else

PFSense dashboard shows the WAN port as up with an IP starting 195: and the gateway shows an IP starting 172: but the PFSense Dashboard shows gateway as Loss 100% Offline packet loss. I have tried setting my Hub2 into Bridge mode and that produces the same error.

I hope someone out there can point me in the right direction

I still have VM BB until the 13th March but I don't want to have to reconfigure my network to work with the Hub2 in router mode

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

Baldrick1 — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:35:57 GMT

@ALancashireLad

Have you left VLAN blank this is important. VLAN is handled by the modem on FTTC, not required for FTTP

Have you added @plusdsl.net to your username, e.g. fred@plusdsl.net?

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

drodgers — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 09:06:56 GMT

I run the Hub2 in modem mode for FttC with PFsense having previously used the OpenReach HG612, the config is the same for both, I attach a screenshot of my WAN connection config, most fields are blank, the IPV6 can be ignored with PlusNet. Funny enough I'm going the other way as FttP isn't happening anytime soon here and I want to keep a home phone.

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

ALancashireLad — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 12:08:08 GMT

Hi Thanks for the help much appreciated unfortunately it hasn't helped

I don't have any VLANS on the WAN port

I have tried entering incorrect username and password and the WAN connection just shows as down so I know I have entered the details are correctly

I have tried pinging the plusnet gateway 172.16.10.107 on my VM account and it just times out no response

Could you try pinging this gateway and if you get no reply your gateway if different because it could be setup to ignore pings

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

ALancashireLad — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 12:09:25 GMT

Thanks had mine setup exactly like yours apart from the MTU number but it made no differance

Cheers

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

Dan_the_Van — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 12:42:30 GMT

@ALancashireLad

The gateway starting 195.166.nnn.nnn for my connection does not respond to pings

Many other devices within the plusnet network do not either.

What are you trying to achieve with the ping test?

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

ALancashireLad — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 14:53:55 GMT

I'm trying to work out why my PFSense router cant access the internet with Plusnet. PFSense has worked fine with Virgin Media

PFSense is connecting to Plusnet as its getting IP and Gateway addresses but PFSense reports the gateway as down 100% packet loss. Everything works fine via the Hub 2 I picking up the same IP address as the PFSense router

All I've done is change the WAN settings from DHCP to PPPoE and entered my user name and password which I know is correct because If I enter it incorrectly the WAN port shows as down I also entered an MTU value of 1492

I did suspect that Plusnet might not allow their servers to respond to pings for security

Feel like I'm going round in circles I must have missed something but I haven't a clue what it is.

Might have to bite the bullet and do a fresh install of PFSense see if that makes any difference, but as normal I forgot to make a backup of the config.

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

MisterW — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 15:24:43 GMT

@ALancashireLad you've probably got Gateway Monitoring enabled.

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/routing/gateway-configure.html

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

Dan_the_Van — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 15:38:57 GMT

A fresh rebuild and restore from a backup is not always as good as it sounds as any erroneous settings would be restored.

Have you used any of the Diagnostics tools, I note amongst many ping, dns lookup, traceroute and command prompt which might be handy

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

Anonymous — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 16:01:06 GMT

@ALancashireLad wrote:

... ... PFSense Dashboard shows gateway as Loss 100% Offline packet loss. ... ...

I use Plusnet DNS server 212.159.6.9 as my ping monitor endpoint

My pfSense Dashboard looks like this -

with Status > Services > dpinger > 'Related settings'

looking like this -

and the WAN Gateway configured like this -

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

MisterW — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 16:02:32 GMT

@Anonymous you seem to have set a different ( not gateway ) ip to monitor. From memory , isn't that one of the dns servers ?

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

Anonymous — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 16:17:16 GMT

I can't remember why exactly I chose those settings, as my pfSense WAN config hasn't been changed since around 2012.

However I have just tried pinging the gateway 195.166.130.251 and get no reply,

whereas pinging Plusnet DNS server 212.159.6.9 does respond.

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

Dan_the_Van — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 08:09:40 GMT

@ALancashireLad

PFSense is connecting to Plusnet as its getting IP and Gateway addresses but PFSense reports the gateway as down 100% packet loss.

I assume you're see something like this?

This does not mean your internet connection is down, just the device being monitored does not respond to ping.

Following @Anonymous instructions you can add a device IP which responds to ping, he using a plusnet DNS IP, I am using

pingbox1.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.164] a device which off plusnet network.

If you click on settings for Gateways you can change the displayed IP, I have chosen both.

HTH

Note:- My pfSense is running as a guest virtual box system.

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

ALancashireLad — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 10:51:30 GMT

Thanks to everybody who responded to my request for help

It was indeed because PFSense automatically sets the Gateway IP as the monitor which is fine if the gateway is set to respond I guess. Added the plusnet DNS server as monitor and everything fine now.

Again many thanks

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 11:29:57 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

I can't remember why exactly I chose those settings, as my pfSense WAN config hasn't been changed since around 2012.

However I have just tried pinging the gateway 195.166.130.251 and get no reply,

whereas pinging Plusnet DNS server 212.159.6.9 does respond.

Having thought about this a bit more, I originally chose 'ntp.plus.net' as my ping endpoint, as I figured that the Plusnet NTP time server 'should' have a fastest response and lowest jitter of any of the Plusnet servers.

Back more than a decade ago, I'm sure that the address my connection pinged when accessing 'ntp.plus.net' was 212.159.6.9, so I chose that because (I think) at the time pfSense only accepted a numeric IP address rather than the name 'ntp.plus.net'.

Looking today at 'ntp.plus.net', the server has changed and is now some device on the BT network -

> nslookup ntp.plus.net Non-authoritative answer: ntp.plus.net canonical name = ntp.vision.bt.com. ntp.vision.bt.com canonical name = ntp.r53-gslb.vision.bt.com. Name: ntp.r53-gslb.vision.bt.com Address: 213.123.16.85

which probably explains why my pfSense NTP server no longer chooses 'ntp.plus.net' for it's NTP "Active Peer" to synchronise with, as the 'Plusnet NTP' server is possibly no longer local to my connection endpoint in Telehouse London, and I have other NTP server pools specified which have less jitter - so pfSense chooses the best candidate from those.

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

Berwhale — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 08:51:45 GMT

Thanks for this. I switched to Plusnet from Aquiss this morning. None of the Plusnet IPs I tried worked as a monitoring IP (would not respond to a ping), however, the ThinkBroadband IP (80.249.99.164)works a treat.

Re: PFSense Connection Issues

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 13:38:12 GMT

@Berwhale wrote:

None of the Plusnet IPs I tried worked as a monitoring IP (would not respond to a ping)

There is an explanation for that !

This topic was originally started in April 2023, and at that time the Plusnet servers that did respond to pings had done so for at least 15 years.

Back on 12th July 2023, Plusnet (unannounced) replaced their servers (as discussed here - Has Plusnet server 212.159.6.9 just gone down ? ), and one of the consequences of that 'upgrade' is that none of the Plusnet servers now respond to 'ping'.

@Berwhale 's observation that Plusnet IPs don't respond to ping were made on 25th September 2023 - after server responses to ping requests had been disabled.

If you are reading this topic looking for a pingable target for use as a connection monitor, there are recommendations here