Firewalla Gold Frustrating Intermittent Connection Loss
Howdy,
One of my two Firewalla Golds has been acting strangely since I purchased it two months ago. LAN clients occasionally lose connection to the WAN/internet. Typically, Chrome displays the error "DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NO_INTERNET". I've had a support case open for weeks, however Firewalla support has been useless.
Topography and Symptoms:
Frontier Fiber ONT - Firewalla Gold in Router Mode - 24 port switch - wired computers and APs
Pings and traces to the WAN from wired PCs behind Gold occasionally fail, however most of the issues seem to impact wireless clients. Pings and communications to/from wireless clients fail about 40% of the time. I've replaced all APs, the 24-port switch, tested all cables, and had the ISP replace their ONT and test the incoming WAN cable. I'm not using any sort of private DNS or VPN on LAN devices. This issue doesn't impact my other Firewalla Gold (different network entirely). Also, when I replace the problematic Firewalla Gold with the ISP's router, the problem completely disappears.
Firewalla insists that there is nothing wrong with this Firewalla Gold, however troubleshooting steps clearly point to the Firewalla Gold being defective here. Has anyone experienced a problem like this with their Firewalla? Do you have any additional troubleshooting recommendations? I suspect some kind of hardware fault with this Firewalla Gold.
Thanks in advance for your help!
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APs- Netgear WAX610, WAX615, and WAX620. We've replaced them all without change. We've tested every cable and component on our network.
Ping failures occur at the Firewalla gateway.
We have no aftermarket antivirus applications running anywhere.
We have a second identical Firewalla Gold box that works without issue. These problems just affect the one box. Pretty clear this is an issue with the one Firewalla Gold, however Firewalla support has been useless.
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I have seen the exact issue on my Firewalla Gold. my entire networks slows days after a week. none of my devices on the network can reach the internet. However, I found out that just rebooting my Firewalla, everything works back to normal and all is good. What makes this interesting. I am still able to connect to my firewalla via the android app with no issue even remotely even with none of my devices are able to reach the internet
I am using my Firewalla as a router while using TP-Link Deco Mesh for my Wifi access points.
I have request a new feature on Firewall to schedule reboots to help reduce this annoyance.
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When the problems happen, did you check if you can ping your Deco Mesh? or ping the firewalla gateway? Devices not getting to LAN can be so many things...
See this article for more tips and tools https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053534593-How-to-debug-network-connectivity-issues-
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The issue was more LAN related rather than WiFi. all of my systems on the LAN were not reachable. I don't expect a fix for this issue any time soon as there is no clear data that can help the team here root cause it. The only viable option is to add support for a feature to enable scheduled reboots of the firewalla
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I've been using a Firewalla Gold unit since May 2021 and it's ran flawlessly up until Febuary 2024. In the last few weeks it's locked up 3 times, including today. The last 2 times I experienced the issue I rebooted the Firewalla Gold and everything working fine. I didn't do any major trouble shooting, but did notice the ISP was online, the Firewalla Gold had flickering lights on all active ports, including the WAN port. Today I'm not home and was accessing information remotely and at around 2:15 pm EST my connection dropped. The app says it's offline. I'm not sure if this is a hardware or software issue, but hoping it's a software bug that can be resolved. When I get home, I'll do some investigation and see if I can get some logs off the device, if it allows me in and/or provide any other details that might be helpful in resolving this instability issue.
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Check with the firewalla network health first and ensure it is not them. We updated this article recently, take a look on other things to check https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053534593-How-to-debug-network-connectivity-issues-
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Just so you’re aware, I’m an IT professional. There is nothing wrong with my network. I use the Firewalla for DHCP and all devices on my network lost their IP addresses, minus any of the devices that set to static. I was not able to ping the Firewalla and noticed it was very hot. Restarting the Firewalla resolved the issue like the past 2 previous times. The only change I made recently was turning on Active Protect to “Strict”. I’ve turned that back to “Default”, as it’s always been set that way for the past 3 years. Not sure if it was working to hard with “Strict” enabled. It is definitely not as hot running today, but time will tell.
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In the last few weeks it's locked up 3 times, including today. The last 2 times I experienced the issue I rebooted the Firewalla Gold and everything working fine. I didn't do any major trouble shooting, but did notice the ISP was online, the Firewalla Gold had flickering lights on all active ports, including the WAN port.
I do have a ticket open with support but I am having a similar issue as you. It seems to happen 1-2 times a day and has been going on since I got my Firewalla Gold SE earlier this week. Everything works fine for hours at a time but the system seems to lock up completely. All of my devices remain connected to the WiFi but no WAN is provided. I confirmed with my ISP (Frontier) that the ONT was all good and there shouldn't be issues using the Firewalla - and - like you I do see the lights flickering on my AP port and my WAN port.
When I try to access the device (even via Bluetooth) it says it's offline, I can't ping or SSH into the box - but - I can ping other devices on my local network.When I dig into the logs it looks to me like the en0/ipv4 is set to a 169.254.x.x IP address just before it locks up.
Tried a bunch of different things with no luck, really hopeful support can find a solution.
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Stumbled onto this thread when searching. I recently installed a Firewall Gold SE at a different house and experiencing the same issue. It's only been a couple of days so far and my first reboot happened this morning and now (6 hours) apart.
Network seems drops entirely (LAN), unable to connect to the Box even if I'm in close proximity. For AP's have 4x Ubiquiti for AP's and the network controller doesn't detect it.
What solves it is unplugging the power and plugging it back in to the Firewalla Gold SE. I don't experience this issue with the Firewalla Gold at my primary location though.
For now following this thread and hopefully have time to troubleshoot the issue, was hoping I didn't have to do this (which is the reason why I went with Firewalla).
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@Firewalla,
I responded via email. But going back to your suggestion. I am unable to ping nor run any tracert when this happens.
Firewalla SE has lights flickering, ONT is up from Verizon ISP, network (dumb) switch's are up, computers are up. What happens is all computers including my AP's just drop out and loses connectivity.Since there were different settings applied and removed before your response. I'm monitoring it now to see if it happens again.
On another note, love the quick and proactive response. Didn't expect to have a ticket open after posting on this thread. Kudos!
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Hi, I also came across this thread and am experiencing similar issues. I have had Firewalla Gold SE for about a week now and in this time I have had to power cycle the unit 3 times. It gets into a state where there is zero LAN connectivity and it is not able to be connected to with the app via LAN or bluetooth.
Please let us know if there are any solutions to this issue as this is not behavior I would expect from a brand new $450 device. Firewalla is a great device so I hope we are able to get more info on this soon. Thank you. -
@Robert, Thanks for following up! I was hoping someone would be able to share a little more insight on this thread, but it sounds like the solution depends on Firewalla support. I will try opening a ticket like you suggested if I can't get this figured out soon.
@Andy, Glad to hear you're problem is resolved. I noticed I also have Active Protect set to "Strict". I'm not sure about the temperature, but all of my other symptoms like DHCP going down, etc. align with what you described. Do you think changing Active Protect from "Strict" to "Default" is what resolved it for you? -
Jumping in here to track if a resolution is found. I’ve had a Gold for several months and, while it’s not frequent, I’ve experienced this same thing. After a couple months of having it, it happened a few times in a relatively short span, then seemed to settle in, but now this week it went out again while I was out of town. ISP was fine, I have ATT fiber that was recently installed and could remotely check that the modem/ONT was online. In addition, after getting back, I could see that even my IP cams hadn’t been able to send anything to my monitoring box, indicating the firewalla was truly locked up, unable to even maintain local routing. A simple restart quickly fixed the issue, and I didn’t do any diagnostics other than looking at the event log that showed nothing out of the ordinary. A running log really should be implemented - enthusiasts and professionals are, I would imagine, the majority of the customer base, and I would think it’s something we would all want.
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I am having the same issue I am working with support but on the next lock up they want me to look at lights and report back what they are doing before I reboot. My luck with this is about 2.3 weeks and any random time it will lock up.
I have 13 other boxes with no issues. But this box is a critical location and it's messing up my sleep...
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