Bizarre behaviour where opnsense fails to detect WAN or 'forgets' it.

[guest24735]

So I started using opnsense two days ago. I'm using the classic T620 Plus with a HP NC364T (2 x Intel 82571EB). The card is absoloutely supported by FreeBSD and works (tested in other machines).

When I first setup, it failed to detect my WAN. I put this down to the fact that I had just unplugged my previous router and thought that my modem needed to restart to hand out a new address. So I restarted the modem and tried to grab a WAN IP by running the opnsense config again. This worked.

Following this I've restarted it a couple of times and it's always picked-up the WAN. However, last night at 1am opnsense seemed to drop both my WAN and LAN simultaneously. I don't know why this happened.

Attempts to restart both the opnsense and the modem have failed to get the WAN back. It does pick up a LAN address but neither port lights up on the NC364T. If I plug into the third unconfigured port the port does light up so the card is working and the driver is loaded.

This meant that I couldn't access the web GUI so I had to plug in a monitor and see what's going on. Numerous attempts to re-run the network config wizard and restart the modem and opnsense have failed to restore either the LAN or WAN.

My ISP is Virgin Media (UK) and I'm using their superhub 1 in modem mode. It' garbage, but in modem mode it's fine.

I'll be honest my experience with FreeBSD/opnsense/pfsense/m0n0wall is absolutely 0. No idea where to go from here. Any pointers?

[guest24735]

So, I've been trying to get this working all day. No luck.

Seems to be a documented issue with Virgin Media judging by some of the similar posts I've seen on the netgate forum. For some reason, restarting opnsense or pfsense causes the modem to have a meltdown and either doesn't issue the WAN or gets confused if the MAC address has changed.

Also found this http://lwbm.readmyblog.org:5652/pfsense-virgin-media-modem-mode.html which offers some solutions. I've tried running a test on my line to force a new WAN IP to be issued, but it doesn't seem to have worked.

Going to power everything off for an hour and pray.

[marjohn56]

The other issue with Virgin, the last I read they don't yet support IPv6!  There used to be, don't know if there still is, with Sky, their BNG would get confused if you took the WAN down and up a couple of times quickly. you then had to disconnect for 30 minutes or so and then re-connect to get an address.


Virgin have just completed the installation down our road, I for one will not be switching, even if they are a lot faster!

[guest24735]

Don't have much choice currently. Openreach are running fibre lines for their ultrafast service but that will take up to a year.

Virgin Media are really the only option other than DSL.

AFAIK Virgin Media does run some services on IPv6. When opnsense was working, I had both IPv4 and IPv6 WAN addresses.

[guest24735]

Alright I've all the suggested solutions and still no luck. I've switched back to my old OpenWRT router since it picks up my WAN without issue. Not sure why this only affects opnsense/pfsense.