pfsense dropping connections

[shadowwyvern]

Despite having changed nothing since last year, when I moved back to college and set up my pfsense router again, it now frequently will drop connections and generally result in internet connectivity being cut out. When this happens, I can usually tell bacause AIM (client: Trillain Basic 3) will tell me I am signed on from two different locations, indicative of IP change. My roommate however, does not get these messages (he is running Trillain Pro 3) but is still disconnected along with me. Most of the time when this happens I am not around, but when I have managed to check, it looks as if it temporarily loses it's DHCP lease. I have switched the WAN interface card to another one I had in the machine, and the problem presists. There appears to be no ditinguishable pattern to it, and full function returns usually less than 15 sec after failure (sometimes Trillian does not even register the interruption). Again, I am not usually there when it happens, but it seems as though the HTTP acsess is also affected. Any ideas? I am thinking of just restting to default settings and configuring everythign anew.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Xipher]

What kind of upstream connection do you have, are you sure it's actually a problem with your router?

 

[shadowwyvern]

Although the network at my college is notoriously unreliable, this does not happen anywhere else, my neighbors who are almost undoubtly plugged into the same switch I am have no such issues. So, my current suspect is my router, specifically something to with how it grabs and manages DHCP addresses. But I have always been under the impression that all the nessecary info was fed to a DHCP clinet by the server (lease time, etc), so I have no idea what could go wrong there, or anywhere else in my settings, to cause this. Like I said, this setup worked perfectly last year, and now almsot always works. Sometimes I wish if somethign is going to break, it would break completely. Here is a log (IP's removed):

Oct 10 14:30:00 	dhclient[316]: DHCPDISCOVER on rl1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
Oct 10 14:30:01 	dhclient[316]: DHCPOFFER from xxx.xxx.xxx.1
Oct 10 14:30:03 	dhclient[316]: DHCPREQUEST on rl1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
Oct 10 14:30:09 	dhclient[316]: DHCPREQUEST on rl1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
Oct 10 14:30:10 	dhclient[316]: DHCPACK from xxx.xxx.xxx.1
Oct 10 14:30:10 	dhclient: New IP Address (rl1): xxx.xxx.xxx.106
Oct 10 14:30:10 	dhclient: New Subnet Mask (rl1): 255.255.254.0
Oct 10 14:30:10 	dhclient: New Broadcast Address (rl1): xxx.xxx.205.255
Oct 10 14:30:10 	dhclient: New Routers (rl1): xxx.xxx.xxx.1
Oct 10 14:30:10 	dhclient: /sbin/route add default xxx.xxx.xxx.1
Oct 10 14:30:10 	dhclient[316]: bound to xxx.xxx.xxx.106 -- renewal in 900 seconds.
<comment by me: 14:33 - AIM tells me I am singed on from different locations>
Oct 10 14:45:10 	dhclient[316]: DHCPREQUEST on rl1 to xxx.xxx.xxx.2 port 67
Oct 10 14:45:39 	last message repeated 3 times
Oct 10 14:47:06 	last message repeated 3 times
Oct 10 14:56:25 	last message repeated 13 times
Oct 10 14:56:44 	dhclient[316]: DHCPREQUEST on rl1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
Oct 10 14:56:44 	dhclient[316]: DHCPACK from xxx.xxx.xxx.1
Oct 10 14:56:44 	dhclient[316]: bound to xxx.xxx.xxx.106 -- renewal in 900 seconds.

all the xxx's are from my college's IP range.

 

[LoStMaTt]

You may have a faulty NIC.

 

[shadowwyvern]

Which one? LAN or WAN? Like I said, I have swapped to a new WAN NIC (the old one is still installed though).

 

[Rabidfox]

900 second DHCP lease (short), that shouldn't be a problem, some dhcp clients have issues with it, try dhcpcd instead of dhclient instead.

They could have changed the dhcp lease time, if everything else fails, maybe try explaining it to an IT guy and have him give you a static. I'm willing to bet if you go the extra mile you can social engineer an IP out of him/her.

Either that, or their DHCP server is balls, either way, good luck!

 

[shadowwyvern]

The chances of my getting a static IP on the basis of "my router hates your dhcp server and keeps dropping IM connections and web traffic" is not very likley, and just asking would probably get me flagged for aditional monitoring (if it is not strictly acedemic, out IT department does not really care)

I thought dhcpd was a server... I any case, I will probably try default settings once I get to a point where I can do without a connection for a while if something goes wrong, either that or upgrade to teh 1.2 release canidate (from 1.0.1).

 

[tdg]

Try another known good cable, try better NIC's (3Com or Intel). Also make sure you don't have any items that give off a lot of interference (fluorescent lights, refrigerator, etc) near your cables. When I worked for a college you'd be surprised how many times bad connections were caused by something completely unrelated.

Failing that, see if they will switch the port on the switch you connect to, it could be going flaky.

 

[Rabidfox]

The chances of my getting a static IP on the basis of "my router hates your dhcp server and keeps dropping IM connections and web traffic" is not very likley, and just asking would probably get me flagged for aditional monitoring (if it is not strictly acedemic, out IT department does not really care)

I thought dhcpd was a server... I any case, I will probably try default settings once I get to a point where I can do without a connection for a while if something goes wrong, either that or upgrade to teh 1.2 release canidate (from 1.0.1).

dhcpcd is the DHCP Client Daemon, not dhcpd the DHCP Daemon. there's an extra c dhcpcd is like dhclient.