SonicWALL Spectrum Ubee Issue

Eradan

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 7, 2006
Messages
1,188
Greetings, all.

Moved one of my clients to a new office last weekend. At their old location they used a SonicWALL TZ300 in conjunction with Time Warner/Spectrum copper service with a single static IP. Never had any issues. A new Ubee modem was waiting at the new location so I brought the SonicWALL over, plugged in their new IP and was unable to access the Internet.

Called Spectrum support and they came out and put in a new Ubee. I was still unable to get to the Internet with the SonicWALL. When cycling the power on the Ubee, I could ping the gateway address on the Ubee for approximately 10 seconds before no response.

I factory reset the SonicWALL and experienced the same symptoms. At this point, thinking the SonicWALL WAN port was defective, I RMA'd that unit. Received a replacement today and still unable to ping the gateway IP on the Ubee (other than a few seconds after a power cycle) and, of course, no Internet access.

I had an old WRT54G in the car so I brought it in, configured their IP info, and had no issue pinging the Ubee or getting to the Internet. Unfortunately they have money invested with SonicWALL for VPN licenses for remote workers and subscriptions for security services. Need to get this working.

I did bring the SonicWALL home this evening and put it on my network. I have residential Spectrum service. I set the WAN interface for DHCP and it pulled an IP immediately, granting me access to the Internet.

To sum up, I've replaced the SonicWALL, the modem, cycled power, factory reset, and made a number of calls to Spectrum and cannot get this thing working. I also had our lead network engineer with 30 years experience come in and sanity check my work. We put a laptop on the SonicWALL WAN port today and gave it the Ubee IP info and could ping that laptop from the SonicWALL without issue.

I've been at this professionally since 1997. This should be fairly straightforward. But I'm out of ideas at this point. Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions.

Thanks for reading.
 
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Try a different patch cable?

Maybe there is some odd setting for duplex on the Ubee?

Screenshot the functional Ubee setup screens and compare them?

All just crap in my head, may be useless. :(
 
This is a freaking long shot, but based on the troubleshooting already done... outside of some kind of stupid layer 1 problem that we've all been through....

Do you happen to have either static ARP configured, or ARP binding on the WAN interface?

Well, shit ... that wouldn't make sense because it shouldn't work on your home network if ARP binding was configured this way... hmm...

When you say you are pinging the Ubee gateway address, you are stating that you are using the Sonicwall built-in diagnostic tools for ping and just hitting its own default gateway (ISP Ubee device), right?

Did you have dual WAN configured previously?
What about the routing table, did you verify that information?

I can only imagine your frustration right now.

Any chance you could provide some sanitized screenshots?
 
Try a different patch cable?

Maybe there is some odd setting for duplex on the Ubee?

Screenshot the functional Ubee setup screens and compare them?

All just crap in my head, may be useless. :(

I did that. The cable currently in use between the Ubee and the Linksys works fine. Also tried 100Mb half duplex. They would link but still no real connectivity.

What model Ubee device?
If it was a gateway, was it set to bridge-mode?

Don't know the model off the top of my head. It is in bridge mode. Although when Spectrum's tech completed their installation, the first modem was in router mode and had wifi enabled. He also gave me the wrong static IP info. All that has been resolved but they have certainly made a mess out of what should be a trivial exercise.

This is a freaking long shot, but based on the troubleshooting already done... outside of some kind of stupid layer 1 problem that we've all been through....

Do you happen to have either static ARP configured, or ARP binding on the WAN interface?

Well, shit ... that wouldn't make sense because it shouldn't work on your home network if ARP binding was configured this way... hmm...

When you say you are pinging the Ubee gateway address, you are stating that you are using the Sonicwall built-in diagnostic tools for ping and just hitting its own default gateway (ISP Ubee device), right?

Did you have dual WAN configured previously?
What about the routing table, did you verify that information?

I can only imagine your frustration right now.

Any chance you could provide some sanitized screenshots?

Yes, pinging the Ubee IP which is the default gateway for the SonicWALL WAN interface from the built-in diagnostics and from my laptop. No issues when pinging the Ubee with the Linksys built-in ping tool or from my laptop when the Linksys is in play.

No dual WAN. I looked briefly at the routing table but will take a closer look today. I would have thought the factory reset on the SonicWALL and then running through the initial setup wizard would have put all settings in order. I've setup so many of these without issue.

Thanks, everyone, for the responses. Will see if I can get some scrubbed screenshots up for your perusal.
 
Get rid of the Ubee, they suck. Get charter out there to install a real cable modem, not one of the crap home gateways.
 
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It is in bridge mode.

<deleted>

Yes, pinging the Ubee IP which is the default gateway for the SonicWALL WAN interface

<deleted>

You have contradicted yourself here. If the Ubee is in bridge mode then it cannot be the default gateway. Please don't say that you're using the mgmt IP of the bridge, 192.168.100.1, as the default route on your FW. This will not work. Also, you stated earlier that you tried 100/half. From memory the Ubee bridge ports are auto and cannot be changed. How did you change them to 100/half?
 
You have contradicted yourself here. If the Ubee is in bridge mode then it cannot be the default gateway. Please don't say that you're using the mgmt IP of the bridge, 192.168.100.1, as the default route on your FW. This will not work. Also, you stated earlier that you tried 100/half. From memory the Ubee bridge ports are auto and cannot be changed. How did you change them to 100/half?

That's not the IP I'm using as my default gateway on SonicWALL WAN interface.

Changed the SonicWALL WAN interface to 100/half.
 
That's not the IP I'm using as my default gateway on SonicWALL WAN interface.

Changed the SonicWALL WAN interface to 100/half.

If the ubee is in bridge mode it cannot be your default gateway. It is a bridge not a router. Now onto the larger issue. Each side of a connection must match. You cannot have one end auto and hard code the other. This is simply is not debatable. If you auto on one side you must auto on the other. If you hard code both sides must be hard coded the same. GigE must always be auto. I'll add that sometimes not following those rules things appear to work .... for a while or under low load or until something reboots ... etc Your real name isn't William by any chance is it? I ask in jest as I work with an SE that has cost my team more hours than I can count over this same not understanding how to configure ethernet ports. I actually made a chart showing all the various failure modes with mixed endpoints.

In short both ends of the wire have to match.

PS if you are William call me ... you know who it is.
 
If the ubee is in bridge mode it cannot be your default gateway. It is a bridge not a router. Now onto the larger issue. Each side of a connection must match. You cannot have one end auto and hard code the other. This is simply is not debatable. If you auto on one side you must auto on the other. If you hard code both sides must be hard coded the same. GigE must always be auto. I'll add that sometimes not following those rules things appear to work .... for a while or under low load or until something reboots ... etc Your real name isn't William by any chance is it? I ask in jest as I work with an SE that has cost my team more hours than I can count over this same not understanding how to configure ethernet ports. I actually made a chart showing all the various failure modes with mixed endpoints.

In short both ends of the wire have to match.

PS if you are William call me ... you know who it is.

Maybe bridge mode isn't the technically correct term in this particular case. Basically I had them disable routing,NAT, firewall, DHCP, wifi, etc. on their Ubee since I have my own infrastructure. On my residential Ubee disabling all these features is referred to as bridge mode. In any case, the Ubee's IP is my SonicWALL WAN interface default gateway. This IP was provided to me by Spectrum as my default gateway along with my usable static IP, subnet mask, and DNS. I'm not talking about my server or workstation default gateways.

As far as speed and duplex ultimately the SonicWALL port was set back to auto. Just tried a couple different speed settings while troubleshooting. They linked but the issue persisted.

Thanks for your help.
 
Couple of long shot ideas to test.......

First, try adding an unmanaged switch in-between the Ubee and the Sonicwall. If everything works, then the Ubee and Sonicwall are not negotiating speed/duplex properly when directly connected

Second idea is to add a Managed/Smart switch in-between the Ubee and Sonicwall. If things work with a managed switch and not an unmanaged switch, then you've got a possible issue with ARP and/or Mac address learning between the Ubee and Sonicwall.
 
Couple of long shot ideas to test.......

First, try adding an unmanaged switch in-between the Ubee and the Sonicwall. If everything works, then the Ubee and Sonicwall are not negotiating speed/duplex properly when directly connected

Second idea is to add a Managed/Smart switch in-between the Ubee and Sonicwall. If things work with a managed switch and not an unmanaged switch, then you've got a possible issue with ARP and/or Mac address learning between the Ubee and Sonicwall.

Agree with the above.

Also it is worth saying that if you thought the port on the sonicwall was going bad why not just switch x0 and x1 ports in the software? Easiest way would be through the wizard as it would ask if you want the default layout or to reverse x0 and x1. You also have a third option from memory for secondary wan.

Personally at this point I'd reload the sonicwall with a different hopefully updated firmware and try again. I'd also try the above switch comments. I haven't touched the ubee modems(I deal with comcast and their unbridgeable shit modems).
 
ah good old arp issue raising its ugly head by the sounds of it. I haven't had one of these since early dsl days.
Change the mac address on the sonic-wall wan interface. A google search will bring up the directions.
 
I know this an old-ish thread, but I wanted to give my input anyway. I've encountered this issue at multiple locations over the past couple months, and until about an hour ago I had no idea what to do to fix it. The site I was dealing with had just upgraded their internet to Spectrum's new pricing and speed, and to accommodate that new speed Spectrum had to upgrade their modem. This "upgrade" was of course the garbage UBEE modem that they have now. I was having the exact issue that you mentioned above. I ended up upgrading the SonicWALL TZ300's firmware from 6.2.4.2-20n to 6.2.7.3-28n and this fixed the issue. I don't believe the firmware upgrade is what really fixed the issue. I think it's more so that the ARP cache was fully flushed on the SonicWALL during the upgrade. I believe this would also work if you backed up the settings, factory reset the SonicWALL, and then imported the new settings. I realize you can flush the ARP cache in the GUI, but it doesn't allow you to flush the "Permanent" ones, which is the MAC associated with the modem. Hopefully that gives someone some extra troubleshooting options for this head scratching issue.
 
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