Giga Hub - PPPoE - Public IP Address change Drops Internet - OPNSense

[argent_archer]

I have bell Giga hub home modem, I am not using it as my router. I have a different device running OPNSense as my router and the bell modem is set to PPPoE mode to send the WAN Public IP Address to the other router. Every time the public IP Address changes, once every day or once every two days, my internet drops and needs a router reboot.
 
I asked the below three questions to a bell support agent and was told that none of the three things below were possible.
 
1. Can I get a static public IP Address for PPPoE or the network in general?
2. Do I need to continue to use the Bell modem as the passthrough between the 3rd party router and the internet coming into the home?
3. If I cannot get a static public IP Address then can be expand the timeframe the public IP address changes so this does not happen every day?
 
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In some of the OPNSense forums I read that we could automate a job to check if the WAN IP changed, so constantly ping to an external site and if it fails, then reboot the router. This could work, but this would still have 2 - 3 minutes of downtime and if I am working and in a meeting or performing any other task that has no failover or pause and retry mechanism, things will continue to fail and will require re-work. The frequency at which the Public IP Address is changing is really not an acceptable pace to keep on rebooting the router. This is a huge discomfort at the moment.
 
Has anyone else faced this issue or overcome it? Any and all guidance is appreciated.

[iMx]

If the ISP modem is doing something akin to 'half bridge' then it is likely just assigning the IP by DHCP (?) to opnsense - in which case, a shorter lease might help.

However, I would first check that:

- opnsense 'sees' the new IP (Interfaces -> Overview) after it has been assigned by the router, if it doesn't, you possibly need to force a new DHCP request
- If it DOES see the new IP, try reloading the firewall (just reloading the PF service should do it) rather than the entire box, to see if this fixes things.  Although if it does see the new IP, you should be able to see 'newwanip' running and clearing previous states in the logs (unless you have sticky sessions enabled).

[argent_archer]

My ISP, gets public IP address assigned randomly and the public IP seems to be changing on a daily basis. Previously, to this post, the internal LAN IP that the modem assigns to my router was set to DHCP, I changed that to a static IP from the internal IP pool. I was using only PPPoE set up with the ISP's provided account credentials to get a WAN address. I just enabled advanced DMZ on the modem as well and pointed it to the router. I am no expert at this so this will have to be an experiment and a fall and get up and keep waling experience for me.

I will wait until the IP changes again and if OPNSense WAN network goes down again, I will check the logs for more details this time, previously my instinct was to turn the router off and on to regain the new WAN IP address.

As a temporary remedy, I think instead of rebooting the router, I can take the interface down and bring it back up too. I tested the below commands and it does take the WAN interface down in OPNSense and brings it back up, so this is also something I will have to test when the internet goes down again at the next public IP change.

ifconfig pppoe0 down
ifconfig pppoe0 up

Question: How do you force a DHCP request in OPNSense? Would it work for the PPPoE connection?

[argent_archer]

Just noticed that the ISP modem has a different Public IP Address and it provides a different Public IP Address to the PPPoE interface and the PPPoE IP changes very frequently. This is weird. Apparantly Advanced DMZ passes the ISP's modem's public IP to the 3rd party router, but PPPoE seems to be working differently...