Hub 5 in modem mode + pfsense

[Mimikm]

Hi All

my biggest nightmare just happened. I have moved house and rubbish talk talk contract just run out. I have got 1Gb Virgin and have received starter pack yesterday. Installed, checked Wi-Fi speed and connected laptop. Cool everything works. Changed to modem mode and connected to my setup:

pfsense ( multiple vlans, pfblockerng, some firewall rules etc) nothing special. 
two Cisco switches and Cisco AP x3

pfsense gets Virgin IP, websites work but, highlight here : virgin website doesn’t. 
WhatsApp Facebook messenger instagram don’t work, no connection. Plus probably many more.

was thinking DNS issue but after disabling my dns setup and forcing Virgin default DNS still the same. When I switch cable over to BT talk talk modem, bosh everything works immediately. 

Is there a simple remedy to this? 
I’m devastated atm.

regards

Dom 

[legacy1]

Can you connect a PC to the hub in modem mode and see if that all works fine?

Likely not the cause but is MTU 1500? 

[Mimikm]

Hi. 
yes, it does work. 

Dom

[legacy1 · Accepted solution]

Ok so put the PC MAC on your pfsense WAN interface and see if you get the same IP and works

[Mimikm]

Hi @legacy1

Works. But now another question, why? 
 does virgin have that many blocked IP’s and I was just unlucky?  

Dom 

[legacy1]

Yes why... because it shouldn't matter and then what if you used router mode with a bad IP?

If your able to post the IP gateway and subnet thats the problem and VM should look into it.

[Mimikm]

Hi 

interesting. IP that didn’t work was within 77.97.160.x  

Thanks again. Appreciate help. 

dom 

[Kain_W]

Thanks for the updates on this Mimikm,

Welcome to the community.

If you do have any future queries/issues then be sure to pop back up for further assistance.

Take care,

[f825_633]

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@Mimikm wrote:

pfsense ( multiple vlans, pfblockerng, some firewall rules etc) nothing special. 
two Cisco switches and Cisco AP x3

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I have a very simular setup. I'm using a Hub3.0. One thing I have found is the VM DNS servers are slow to respond so I dont use them. Also from time to time their DHCP server can be slow to respond to so the WAN timeout needs to be around 60 seconds. These are my settings which seem to work.

Another thing I have noticed is if the DHCP server hasnt responded and then pfsense goes into the routine of trying to reuse old IP's found in the lease file and that seems to upset their DHCP server. I did some packet traces and was getting invalid option messages relating to trying to renew an old address.

for me the fix is to remove the leases file for the WAN interface so it has nothing to cycle through.

my WAN interface is mvneta2, yours might be different , login to pfsense and open a shell.

type crontab -e which will open the cron file and let you add an entry. type @reboot rm /var/db/dhclient.leases.mvneta2 and save the file. then every time pfsense is rebooted it will remove the leases file so dhcpclient will have nothing to cycle through and create a blank one.