I’m trying to upgrade the hardware on a pfsense router we’ve been using for about 10 years, which was already recycled hardware at the time. Upgrading from an old dell with a pentium 4 something to an HP T620 Plus per recommendation here.
I installed the latest build of pfsense, logged in to the web console just fine, and even restored my backup. However it seems that it cannot establish wan link.
It’s not the network port as I’ve tried multiple ports all to the same result. If I set those same ports as LAN they work fine.
My hope was to restore the backup from the old hardware and drop in place. DHCP works and all of our programs/network shares and database applications work as if nothing happened, we just have no WAN.
BTW when I go to assign the ports in console, the link is up for each one I’ve tried.
Any ideas?
ISP dhcp working? Your MAC address changed presumably so your isp will have to authorize it or give you a new lease. I had this problem before and it was very frustrating.
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Ooooooh yeah now that you mention it I will probably have to call them to reinitialize or something… Ok well I can work with that. But in the mean time since it couldn’t reach wan my config want fully restored since it could not download packages. Any idea how I can get internet by connecting my wan port to my current lan? I tried that as well with no luck.
Ideally I’d like to make sure this thing is fully set up before I go through the hassle of contacting spectrum.
If you aren’t getting internet behind your current router there might be deeper issues on your end. Can you verify that your WAN port on your new router is working?
My ISP does the same thing. Port security is what I’m guessing so you cant just plug in any modem and get free internet.
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What kind of modem are you using?
I know it’s working because A, when I go to assign interfaces it says link up. B, I have used that same wan interface as lan.
@thetazman I understand what you’re saying but we’re talking router and not modem. The modem is not changing.
@Whizdumb It’s a motorolla,
Humor me and try this… Disconnect the ethernet from your modem to your pFsense box. Then reboot your modem until you establish full connection to the Wan. With most surfboards it’ll be something like green blue blue green or something like that… Then after a full reboot of the modem, plug the ethernet from the modem back into your pFsense box. Then check and see if you got an ip…
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Just because it is behind a modem doesn’t mean that the MAC address couldn’t be the problem. In my case I had to clone the MAC address of the modem to my router. If you are using the same NIC and port as before it “shouldn’t” have changed but you should check just to eliminate that possibility.
Are you using Cable or DSL? In my case I was using Xfinity cable.
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I did attempt a full power cycle the other day but there was other stuff going on so maybe I missed something and was not as thorough. Will try again after close of business today since we just got in and I don’t want to experiment while we have work to do.
The key thing here is to make sure that when you power cycle the modem you have to unplug the ethernet cable that links your modem and your pFsense box… Then you should only reconnect that cable after the modem is fully reset and a connection to the internet is established.
This is how I have to reboot my pFsense and modem and it works everytime…
I cloned the mac address on the new install and everything seems good.
I feel like I’ve had this problem every time I’ve replaced a router. But since that only happens every several years, I always forget about cloning the mac address.
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Yeah, it is a pita. Glad that was your problem and it was an easy fix.
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