Question: I believe I may have a NIC issue. Before swapping out boxes, I was wondering if there is a way to swap the logical interfaces. I have a Intel Dual Port Ethernet card. My issue only happens on one of the ports. I’d love to keep the interface configurations by just swap the physical ports. Can I do this via the web configuration or do I have to be at the box?
Details of Issue: We have two wireless networks, a private and a guest. The private never goes down. The public goes down frequently (like 1 time a week). This network is never under load. It will go down with nobody on it. What I mean by ‘goes down’ is that I cannot ping any of them. What I found is if I unplug the public waps from the switch and then plug them in 1 by 1 I usually find one that causes all the others to stop responding to a ping. If I unplug that WAP the others stop timing out and respond to the ping. I’ve swapped the WAP a couple of times thinking I have a bad WAP but that doesn’t do it. If I go to the bad WAP and unplug it and plug it back in, all is well … for a couple of days.
- I have replaced the cabling going from the public switch to the port of the Intel Dual port card.
- I have replaced the switch I am using for the public network.
- I think my next step is to isolate it down to the card. Since the private switch is plugged into the other port of that intel card, and never goes down, I want to swap the ports and see if the private network starts to experience this.
My hardware and software details
- WAN - ATT U-verse modem
- Enterprise Firewall/Router - pfsense 2.1 latest build on a dell box with 3 ports (WAN, and a dual ethernet card intel that has ports for private and public)[/li]
- Private switches(2) - Netgear Prosafe 24-Port Gigabit Switch
- Public switch(1) - Netgear Prosafe 24-Port Gigabit Switch
- WAPS(5)- public WAPs Cisco WAP300N. BTW, the private WAPs are the same make/model and have same load but never get into this situation. I am using Captive Portal turned on the public network with no authentication just a welcome screen and a connect button.
Thanks so much for your insight!