Pretty much what the title says. I added an OPNSense router to my homelab about a month or two ago, along with a Ubiquiti Managed Layer-2 Switch and a Linksys AP with Openwrt flashed onto it so I could get the full modem --> router --> switch --> AP combo and freedom to do what I want (VLANs, real firewall rules, eventual IDS/IPS and QoS planned).
But for the last two/three weeks or so, every week at least once a day will the Internet go down for some reason, leaving my family without internet for an hour or more. The catch is, this is happening even when my family is connected to the Wi-Fi provided by the original ISP modem-router and not my new network running on OPNsense. A few weeks ago, we had an outage, but my mom thought it was my fault at the time, so I took the modem out of bridge mode so that they would switch to that Wifi if one of my devices had an issue for some reason.
I know it’s not overlapping networks, OPNSense’s WAN uplink is set to dhcp, and the LAN is 192.168.1.0/24 while the original Cox WiFi LAN is 192.168.0.0/24. The Wi-Fi frequencies aren’t overlapping either (although 2.4 GHz is the only one that problem anyway right? My 5GHz freqs are different anyway), but once again, it seems like the Cox modem literally shits itself and that it’s not just a network issue. The same amount of devices are connecting, I haven’t added 100+ devices to the OPNsense network that would cause the modem to overload.
We have a Cox Technicolor CGM4331. When operating normally, the router’s color is solid white, but when it’s having these issues, I’m pretty sure it turns solid orange/amber, which apparently means it’s powering up. I’ll verify if it’s solid orange or blinking though, as blinking amber means downstream is being registered (flashing green is upstream). Sometimes rebooting/unplugging it works, but today my mom said it didn’t.
We’ve had some confirmed ISP outages within the month, even on days without bad weather, and Cox got bought by Spectrum, so I wonder if there’s something there. But it’s reaching a point where I’m about to just turn off my networking stuff to see if it’s still shitting itself, but I don’t want to have to do that since I’d have to fix my homelab service IPs again…
I just don’t want my parents to get sick of my shit man 😭
Are you using OPNSense to do the PPPoA / PPPoE connection through the ISP modem?
I’m a pfSense user, but I recall there was an issue with the PPPoA / E driver / function… I don’t recall the details as it wasn’t affcting me, but basically it was the firewall dropping the connection, and the modem was just doing what it was told, which could be why the local wifi is also affected. Maybe OPNSense has the same problem…
Keep a track of when this happens and what was happening at the time, that might help you to work out what’s going on. Only during the day? Also failing at night? With 6x 4k movies streaming? When idle? And as someone else mentioned… have you disturbed the cables, etc… maybe one of the cheap cables is having problems? It’s happened to me before…
It smells like DHCP servers - more than one?
We have a Cox Technicolor CGM4331. When operating normally, the router’s color is solid white, but when it’s having these issues, I’m pretty sure it turns solid orange/amber
Sort of sounds like a WAN issue on Cox’s end or a hardware issue with the modem itself.
Ignoring issues with Cox’s network - One thing to check, since you’re saying you added new equipment that means you probably moved things around & resettled them in the space you keep this stuff in. Is it possible the cable modem is overheating with how you have it set up now? Like if you’re blocking it from air space, or crowding it with other heat emitting devices, that cable modem might overheat. When cable modems overheat they are prone to do stuff like restart / freeze on startup.
It could also be that the cable modem itself is going bad and the timing of adding your other equipment earlier is just a red herring.