Back to PfSense :(

[avvid]

Was really loving the OPNsense GUI, reports, and how a number of things are really streamlined (Like traffic shaping).   It's easier to do easy things in OPNsense.

Unfortunately, like a number of people have experienced (as I've read through the forum and other sites), the PPPoE and MLPPP stack is just atrocious at this time.   I have 3 DSL modems terminated at the firewall running MLPPP.   The hardware is great (Quad-core, Intel NICs, etc.) Here are some of the things I've gone through;

1) MTU/MRRU etc. settings in Advanced screen will not stick, and get blanked out on basically any change whatsoever.
2) PPPoE/MLPPP connection will NOT reset upon any change, or modem drop etc.   Leaving me to manually force the connection to come up, or sometimes having to re-save the WAN settings and then reboot.
3) Even upon reboot, the MLPPP connection will only come up 50% of the time with me trying various save, reconnect etc. until it does.  Total reboot to reconnect time has been as high as 10-15 minutes!
4) REALLY long reboot -> connection established vs. pfsense (timed: 202 seconds MINIMUM! vs 32 seconds)
5) Have received occasional kernel panic on reboot a few times after changing MLPPP settings and re-booted.  Been re-installed twice from scratch, same issues.   One ONE occasion the kernel panic trashed the system, and had to re-install from scratch.

And no, pfsense doesn't demonstrate any of these symptoms on the same HW and configs.

I live in a Rural area, and unfortunately my DSL isn't 100% stable (more like 95%) which occasionally requires a modem to re-sync, or once every month or so I need to power cycle a modem.   Anytime this happens I'm down for minutes, if not longer.   Pfsense usually takes seconds to realize a change to the environment and does a re-sync and authentication automatically, never a re-boot required.  Only possibly a quick re-connect if I'm adding a new modem back into the group.   My wife and I both work at home, so you can imagine the frustration.

This is NOT to be a bitch at OPNsense, I was (am?) really looking forward to this product becoming all it can be, at which time I look forward to being a paying customer.  But the whole MLPPP/PPPoE stack needs a hand grenade currently.  I really hope to see these things fixed soon.   Wish I could help more, but unfortunately need to flip back to pfsense and get back to work.

Cheers!

[franco]

Hi avvid,

Thanks, this is appreciated. Going with the tool that works for users has always been our goal. There wouldn't be much sense to suggest otherwise.

Just personally, pfSense spent a lot of years to get where it is. I don't agree with some of the design goals and thinking back the only reason why work for OPNsense was never part of pfSense to make for the most awesome project on this planet is still eluding me. Everything started as contributions to pfSense as it should have been.

So, anyway, the workload is high for both projects and the core team of OPNsense has several areas of interest with steady progress. That PPPoE and MLPPP are not part of this is just means we welcome everyone to improve the code. I would expect it's not a larger issue here, just finding the code lines that are currently making it harder than it should. The fixes may be light, but the hours to find the right fixes may be more than the current team has on its hands. It's a difficult situation. We can only see what 2017 will bring in this regard.

For what it's worth, we won't give up and work through it like we've always done.

Good luck on your path and a happy new year.


Cheers,
Franco