Smoothwall S9 filtering randomly falls over

[timbo343]

Update to this thread.

 

We have had over 24 hours of the Smoothwall not falling over, this is a first in 4 weeks and a lot of trial and error.

 

We had a plan to update the original S9 up to Maiden 4 but in doing so i had to use one of our 3 internet lines which were part of the LLB group. I disabled the slower one (a FTTC line) of the three (around 11am) and waited until i knew everyone would have been off that line - this was about 14:30 - unplugged that line from the new S9 running Leeds57 and plugged it into the original S9 running Leeds62 - it updated to Maiden 4.

 

Since disabling the slower line at 11am, the smoothwall never fell over for the rest of the day and it's not fallen over at all today. We were waiting at 9am for it to fall over, then waiting at 9:30am and so on until dinner time, not once did the smoothwall fall over.

 

Currently we are running Leeds57 with 2 of the 3 lines LLB'd together with the slower line still disconnected.

 

We will be running like this for the next couple of days before i move our config over to the original box running Maiden 4 and test with the 2 lines, excluding the FTTC line.

 

Once we are happy with the original box and things are stable, i'll put the 3 line back in and see what happens.

[simpsonj]

Was this solved @timbo343? My new S9 box has failed twice today with the Gateway going down requiring a soft reboot to solve and I'm wondering if it's a similar issue. No option to update to Maiden 4 for me though.

[timbo343]

Was this solved @timbo343? My new S9 box has failed twice today with the Gateway going down requiring a soft reboot to solve and I'm wondering if it's a similar issue. No option to update to Maiden 4 for me though.

 

@simpsonj The stuff in Italics was from the beginning of October 2022 replying to another thread that i had open.

 

Update to this thread.

 

We have had over 24 hours of the Smoothwall not falling over, this is a first in 4 weeks and a lot of trial and error.

 

We had a plan to update the original S9 up to Maiden 4 but in doing so i had to use one of our 3 internet lines which were part of the LLB group. I disabled the slower one (a FTTC line) of the three (around 11am) and waited until i knew everyone would have been off that line - this was about 14:30 - unplugged that line from the new S9 running Leeds57 and plugged it into the original S9 running Leeds62 - it updated to Maiden 4.

 

Since disabling the slower line at 11am, the smoothwall never fell over for the rest of the day and it's not fallen over at all today. We were waiting at 9am for it to fall over, then waiting at 9:30am and so on until dinner time, not once did the smoothwall fall over.

 

Currently we are running Leeds57 with 2 of the 3 lines LLB'd together with the slower line still disconnected.

 

We will be running like this for the next couple of days before i move our config over to the original box running Maiden 4 and test with the 2 lines, excluding the FTTC line.

 

Once we are happy with the original box and things are stable, i'll put the 3 line back in and see what happens.

 

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We are thinking the same that we have accidentally found the solution too.

 

It kinda all makes sense. We moved to 2x FTTP lines at the beginning of summer with the Zen FTTC as the 3rd so the LLB won't have pushed to it's limits or the LLB wont have been used as much.

 

Smoothwall have said that LLB should work with 3 lines.

 

-----

 

Smoothwall 3rd line created me a couple of scripts and commands i could run which restarted services meaning we could get the net up and running in seconds rather than minutes and having various versions of the script meant we could identify the issue. We thought it was Auth until the script with only restarting auth didn't work. It was only until I said i would update the original box with the ZEN line and disable the 3rd line from LLB the box didn't fall over.

 

What is interesting was when we were troubleshooting with 2nd line, we disabled both the ZEN FTTC and TTB FTTP line and the box still fell over.

 

We have got plans to drop the ZEN FTTC line as we have the NyNet and TTB line now.

 

We have tried disabling and blocking so much in an attempt to find the issue it kinda feels like im reluctant to put everything back to how it was.

 

3rd Line has said that the LLB should be able to handle 3 lines, but if the other 2 (FTTP) are around 600mb each and the FTTC is around 40mb (and the bandwidths are configured in the interfaces) maybe the LLB isn't doing what it should be doing.

 

We have got open evening tomorrow night so i don't fancy changing anything then, i am thinking friday evening or monday evening moving over to the original box and use Maiden with the 2 FTTP lines. If everything is ok for a week, i'm thinking of plugging in the FTTC back in and adding back to the LLB to see what actually happens.

 

It certainly is a coincidence i've remove the FTTC from the LLB and the box hasn't fallen over.

 

I was getting paranoid that it was the new version of Windows 10 LTSC 2021 that we deployed out at summer was the issue.

 

Just as a heads up of how I connect to the net via the smoothwall with my lines:

 

NyNet FTTP:

Smoothwal > Router > ONT > Fibre

 

TTB FTTP:

Smoothwall > ONT > Fibre

 

Zen FTTC:

Smoothwall > small 5 port gig switch > DrayTek 130 VDSL2 modem > open reach 5c box on the wall > Copper lines to Cab on street.

 

Goes to show that the TTB FTTP line doesn't need the crappy router that ISPs send out.

 

-----

 

Now running Maiden 4 on the original box as of 6pm tonight. We are still running our 2 FTTP lines through the original box but we haven't had an issue all week, in fact the smoothwall hasn't missed a beat since removing the FTTC from the LLB rules.

 

Going to run Maiden 4 for a couple of days and if things are ok by Wednesday evening, the FTTC line is getting plugged back into to the LLB to see what happens on Thursday - if it falls over, the FTTC line is getting removed and disconnected earlier than planned.

 

-----

 

I still put it down to LLB playing up. We are now running on our original S9 with Maiden 4 with no issues.

[simpsonj]

Interesting, thanks for that.

 

I don't think I have the same issue (I've only one line in for start!) and the issue is the Smoothwall complains that the line gateway on that line is down and stops web traffic, despite the fact I can still ping 8.8.8.8. Issue resolves after a soft reset.

 

Found a KB that suggested turning off Connection Monitoring when running a single line, so I'm trying that.

[timbo343]

Even though 8.8.8.8 responds via Ping, when the gateway is down can you ping google.co.uk? I'm thinking it could a DNS issue.

 

Does your ISP provide a router for their connection or do you use a PPPoE connection?

 

Connection monitoring could help in this matter.

 

If it's gateway, i'd have thought it was an issue further up pas the smoothwall such as router [emoji848]

 

You've probably checked the Smoothwall logs to see if anything stands out.

[simpsonj]

There something odd going on with Spanning Tree and Smoothwall.

 

I have two connections to our local network, one for computers, the other for our VoIP system and PBX. At 09:00 and 10:00, both today and yesterday, both ports were blocked by STP on my Core Switch, causing major headaches! Rebooting the Smoothwall seems to resolve the issue; but doesn't tell me why it's happened. This wasn't an issue before we swapped to the S9. I've checked the config of the Core Switch, and the ports are on separate vLans, no tagging or untagging between the two (indeed ,they are forbidden from talking to each other) so I don't think it's an issue from the switch point of view.

 

I recall we had issues resetting up the config on the new S9 for the VoIP system, and made some changes removing unnecessary firewall rules, but maybe we took out something that should have stayed in. What's infuriating is that it only happens at certain times, and it can go a week without rearing its head, so you think you've solved it!

[supportman]

Just been having similar issues suddenly on our S8 box which has been stable for 5+ years...

 

I have taken some advice from this thread such as making an exception for CCTV and the block pages hint as well.

 

Thanks everyone for the comments, they have helped greatly.