PIA and PFSense

godyourestupid

I am having problems with PIA staying connected through PFSense. It will drop internet at random after being up for either a few minutes or a few hours. This has been going on for days. 

I set up PIA using the following tutorial,  https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client-support/pfsense. 

I know the credentials are correct, I can still connect using the PIA provided client software. After the connection is dropped I disable the open VPN client and my internet is restored. 

I connect to, us-chicago.privateinternetaccess.com

I am completely out of ideas. On how to make this work. I have disabled everything on the server but the settings required to run PIA and I still get disconnected from PIA servers.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? 

Is there a resolution? 

PLEASE HELP! 

medway01

I use pfsense and have done for nearly a year, usually the connection is rock solid and never needs attention but since the 25th dec I have had constant drops, had 11 yesterday requiring a restart of the vpn service in pfsense dashboard. It went offline twice while typing this reply.

I have a kill rule set up so when the VPN drops, it kills the connection, a PITA sometimes but sometimes necessary.

I have tried changing from my usual gateway to USA and other ones but it still drops out. Looking around the forum there are a few posts about the desktop client dropping, I don't think its the clients or pfsense but something to do with PIA having major issues over the past few days, did everyone get PIA as a present this year or have PIA let the hamster starve ?

Get your finger out PIA, this is a mess and needs sorting,

HTH.
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genericon792

I've been using pfsense and PIA seamlessly for over a year now, but since I returned from holiday travel a couple of days ago, the connect has dropped continuously.  I've tried numerous gateways across the US and Canada.  What is going on?

medway01

Well theres now three 'customers' using pfsense having issues and quite a few who use PIA clients having issues, I would say that for the last few days there is some problems with PIA itself.

I did wonder if it was my ISP dropping causing the vpn to drop but according to my modem logs its not dropped in the last 24 hours but PIA has many times.

I would suggest that if your pfsense install worked ok before the drops happened then do not mess with pfsense unless some new setting comes out that fixes the PIA issue, however given the lack of communication from PIA about this I wont hold my breath.

HTH

medway01

If anyone using pfsense has issues then try this:

Ping the server address you use to get its IP address EG

PING  us-california.privateinternetaccess.com

This results in its IP showing > 198.8.80.26

Take that IP address and shove it in the pfsense vpn client Server host or address

EG replace > us-california.privateinternetaccess.com

With > 198.8.80.26

Restart the VPN service in the dashboard. ( if other services stop, restart them )

HTH
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godyourestupid

medway01 said:

If anyone using pfsense has issues then try this:

Ping the server address you use to get its IP address EG

PING  us-california.privateinternetaccess.com

This results in its IP showing > 198.8.80.26

Take that IP address and shove it in the pfsense vpn client Server host or address

EG replace > us-california.privateinternetaccess.com

With > 198.8.80.26

Restart the VPN service in the dashboard. ( if other services stop, restart them )

HTH
--

Why does that matter? 

I will try it, but I now I have to know why using the ip address instead matters? 

Also is anyone from PIA going to chime in on this? 

bogmonster

I am using pfSense just recently and I am getting a lot of drops from the UK servers. Most frustrating. As I have only just set up pfsense it might be to do with my config but somehow I expect it is PIA....

BW, BM

godyourestupid

To follow up, I have not had any issues since changing over to the ip versus us-blahblach..

Good job medway01 and thank you!

pigbait

the problem with this setup is your stuck to that specific IP, how can we setup Pfsense to rotate through the IP range of PIA servers... Also this is something that has just changed it the last while because before none of us had this problem...

godyourestupid

NVM - SOLVED

Deltaq

I been having this issue too that i actually reset my pfsense router a couple of times thinking i had config corruption of sorts, finally tried this method but used an external source to resolve the domain as the setup i used with unbound dns resolver just kept giving an ip that just refused to make the tunnel. Maybe unbound needs a shorter retention on dns entries? I believe the default retention on its cache is 1 day.

Edit: I found the source of my issue to be one of the dns server entries in pfsense kept giving this since ip entry that went to korea instead of the typical us registered ip. Sticking to opendns and google dns from now on.

h311m4n

Been having the same weird problem with the vpn dying like every few minutes for the past 2-3 months. Very annoying. Tried the IP solution above, we will see if this works.

From what I can tell in the logs, the connection drops out for some reason and the client is restart. 

It would be nice if someone from PIA could clarify why this happens...