No LAN on OPNSense using a HP T620 Plus with a HPE NC375T NIC

Networking
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Hi all, I’m in need of some help here. No idea what’s causing this bizzare issue.

I use to use OpenWRT on a variety of routers, but I wanted to gain a bit more networking knowledge with Pfsense and OPNsense. I went with OPNsense for the GUI.

For the most part it’s been a breeze. I wanted something low-power, so as many reccomended it I went with a thin client specifically the HP T620 Plus as I could put a quality gigabit NIC in it.

For my NIC I went with a HPE NC364T which I chose because it uses two Intel 82571EB controllers.

After putting OPNsense on it I was blown away, really great software and actually improved my connection speed despite the firewall.

That was until I restarted it and my modem after a couple of days, suddenly it didn’t want to pick up a WAN IP (DHCPv4).

What was weirder was that it also didn’t allow me to reach the router from the LAN. But the lights were on, on both ports and were occasionally flashing.

After much troubleshooting, the only remaining possibility was a bad NIC. This seemed to be correct as I bought an identical NIC and after installing it everything returned to normal for weeks.

Yesterday I restarted it and my modem and OPNsense for something unrelated. Exactly like last time it failed to pick-up a DHCPv4 WAN address and it’s unreachable over LAN.

The only thing it can ping is itself. Even with my PC directly connected into it. It still lights up and occasionally flashes the port.

I’ve even switched back to the old NIC and it’s doing the same (though with the old NIC there’s this odd whine sound).

What I don’t understand is why it has worked for literrally weeks until this moment. I’ve restarted just OPNsense (not the modem) several times for updates.

Do I just have the worst luck ever with NIC’s or is there possibly something else going on here? I don’t really want to have to buy a new NIC every time I restart my kit :slightly_frowning_face:.

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Are you getting new NICs or used? I’d try some different models. Gigabit is so cheap these days.

One note on opnsense. I was an advocate of theirs for a while, but not as much anymore. Updates and breakage are too frequent for a gateway and configuration is almost entirely tied to the gui. You can do a few things with the API, but it has a long way to go.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t use it, but just my impressions after living with it for a while (year or 2).

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Used. I’m in the UK and NIC’s (that are supported by FreeBSD) are actually somewhat hard to come by for a good price.

The HPE NC364T is the main one I keep finding online (£25~). I’ve struggled to find anything else with an Intel chipset. The only other cards I can find are litterally the same card but branded as “Dell” or “IBM”. I have seen a couple of Dell Intel i350-T4’s though (£50~).

In terms of new cards I’ve really not found much other than off-brands with dubious non-Intel chipsets.

I mainly went with OPNsense for the cleaner GUI. I’ve found the software itself to be pretty stable but that might be because I’m not really running any packages. It’s mainly to escape my ISP’s awful router that does several things like enabling SIP ALG without an option to disable it.

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I would love to go with something new from Intel since I know they’re good then and they come with a low-profile adapter. But literally everything says on their site says “price unavailable”. I can’t find any re-sellers either.

For example, this: https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/products/network-io/ethernet/gigabit-adapters/et2-quad-port-server.html

Edit: I found a couple of re-sellers. All of them sell it for about £300+ holy shit.

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I’ve managed to find an Intel E1G42ET for £79 new with warranty (in case my cursed thin client kills another card).

Good choice?

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I have now flashed Pfsense Community Edition onto the HP T620 Plus just to rule out some weird OPNsense issue.

Unfortunately, the issue has persisted. The web gui is unreachable from a LAN device. Can’t even ping the device.

I did, however, notice that the connection is running at 100Mbit/s which is not right. The ports also indicate this as they are green.

So it looks like I am either very unlucky or my T620 Plus is sentient and is murdering every NIC I give it.

I honestly can’t think why they’re dying so fast and so randomly. It’s not like they’re bad NIC’s, in fact, they are reccomended quite widely in the PFsense community. It seems to be restarts that are killing it, rather than dropping after a prolonged period of activity.

I can find new Intel E1G42ET’s (dual port) new for £79 with a good warranty. I can get cheaper on the used market but given my past experience I’d rather just buy new NIC’s from a known company with a solid warranty. Should I go for it?

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Went with the Intel E1G42ET’s (dual port) for £79 (new).

It’s overkill but I’d rather it be overkill than have another dead used NIC. All working on Pfsense now.