I getting a new modem friday, cant install until monday as the ISP wont be open when i get home fri night, they will be open again on monday am.
Here is my plan:
The modem supports LAGG (has 2 1gb interfaces).
i am going to move my pfsense setup out of its current 2U case and into a regular case setup by the modem. Add a 4 port intel nic, and i can mimic my current setup real easily.
Setup a LAGG in pfsense using ports em2, em3
use port 1 (em1, same as now) for the lan, and change the WAN to the LAGG.
this should allow me to use the full 1gb speeds i am provided with , instead of 960mb/sec (i know its not much lol).
Then i can move the proxmox server into the 2u case.
its either that or virtualize pfsense and pass through a bunch of nic’s to make it work… and resetup my highly modified config, ugg. I guess i could pass though the drive as well…
The plan works if the modem’s “LAGG” is real 802.3ad toward your router and not just two independent LAN ports. A lot of ISP gateways advertise two 1G ports that are not a bond you can LACP into for more than ~1G of actual WAN.
Quick checks before you rebuild the 2U:
Confirm the modem docs say LACP/802.3ad on those ports, and that the ISP side actually aggregates. If it’s just two LAN ports into a switch chip, pfSense LAGG will negotiate oddly or still top out near one link.
For a jump from ~960 → ~1000 Mb/s, LAGG is a lot of moving parts for a rounding error. A single 2.5G (or better) NIC between modem and pfSense is usually cleaner if the modem has it.
Keeping bare-metal pfSense and sliding Proxmox into the 2U is the lower-risk path versus re-virtualizing a highly modified config on Friday night. If you do virtualize later, passthrough the whole NIC (or the intel 4-port) and restore from config backup — don’t rebuild by hand.
So: LAGG is fine if the modem truly bonds; otherwise one faster link + keep the current pfSense box. The 40 Mb/s you “lose” today isn’t worth a weekend outage.
Im not getting a isp modem, its a netgear cm2500.
According to the manual the spec is LACP-IEEE 803.3ad .
The isp side is cable (coax).
im going to configure a generic router (i have many) as a interim until im ready to put the new pfsense setup into production.
Anyways i got a letter saying to upgrade to a docsis 3.1 or higher modem to “avoid degraded service” . Icluding but not limited to slower speeds, frquent interuptions, reduced reliability and limited access to some features (?) .
I got the parts transferred into a new chassis, and mostly ready to go.
The 4 port card messes with my setup so I need to change some settings and i should be good.
Well that was an adventure.
Called the isp, they added the modem and i plugged it in. got a shock whilst screwing the cable (coax) in; Made me go hmmm.
It booted up, but every few minutes it would reset itself.
spent about an hour on the phone with the isp they want to send someone out. i dont think thats needed right now.
So i said:
Self, lets change the power supply and see what happens
So i did and now its stable until i try and access the webgui, then it crashes. i suspect the old modem power supply is barely enough and if i connect to the webgui it crashes due to not quite enough power.
I will contact netgear an request a new power supply.
Spending time on try to get the netgear support person.
i couldnt get them to understand that the modem adapter was electrically shocking me.
Sigh.
also i wrote a ping script that goes like so:
while true
do
ping -c4 8.8.8.8 |tee -a ping.txt
sleep 30
done