# Can't get IP from modem via DHCP?



## Gogeden (Feb 21, 2014)

This pertains to pfSense and I never get any assistance on the pfSense forums so I'll post on here since pfSense is based on FreeBSD.

So for some reason I can not get an IP on my Rosewill RC-404 NIC (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833166005) when used as a WAN from the modem via DHCP.
I even bought a new modem.

I've done the following:

- Reinstalled version 2.1 of pfSense
- Restarted and factory reset both the old and new modems
- Swapped WAN/LAN duties with the card in question and the LAN card
- Switched from IPv4 to IPv6
- Used an entirely different computer with the same cards
- Exchanged the goofy card with the exact model
- Changed the IRQ number (Had a notification via the BIOS at boot that there was a conflict)

I even had problems with it on a FreeNAS box I have.
The only thing I haven't done is test it with a non-BSD based system.
I'll test the card(s) with Ubuntu GNU/Linux and see what happens.

Has anyone else experienced this?
I've spent about 2 days trying to resolve the issue and really don't understand what's going on here.


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## SirDice (Feb 21, 2014)

Have you tried a different card? And by different I mean different type and/or manufacturer. With everything you tried I would guess the card you have may not be supported.


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## Gogeden (Feb 21, 2014)

Thank you so much for the swift reply! 

It's weird though because Newegg states that the card has FreeBSD 8.0 support.
False advertising?
I have another card that apparently uses the same chipset and that works but it's by Trendnet.
Maybe I should file a bug report?


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## kpa (Feb 21, 2014)

Is that by any chance a Realtek based card? If it's recognized by the kernel as an re(4) card but does not work it might the typical case where Realtek has pushed yet another new revision of their card on the market but hasn't updated the device ID on the card. The end result is that the FreeBSD driver recognizes the card because of matching vendor/device IDs but it doesn't work because the card is essentially different than what the driver expects.


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## SirDice (Feb 21, 2014)

If you do file a bug report file it with pfSense. We have no idea what exactly they modified.


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## SirDice (Feb 21, 2014)

kpa said:
			
		

> Is that by any chance a Realtek based card?


Zooming in on the picture on NewEgg I see it's a RTL8169SC. 



> If it's recognized by the kernel as an re(4) card but does not work it might the typical case where Realtek has pushed yet another new revision of their card on the market but hasn't updated the device ID on the card. The end result is that the FreeBSD driver recognizes the card because of matching vendor/device IDs but it doesn't work because the card is essentially different than what the driver expects.


Yes, that's what I'm thinking too.


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## Gogeden (Feb 21, 2014)

Yes it is a Realtek-based card.
The strange thing is that it WAS working for awhile but whenever the link gets broken (By resetting the modem, the machine itself, etc), I can't ever get the link back up again.
I also tried testing with FreeNAS and FreeNAS didn't even detect the card.


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## SirDice (Feb 21, 2014)

You may have more luck with the card using something based on a more recent version of FreeBSD. Or by using FreeBSD itself of course. No guarantees on any of the derivatives but it's possible a recent FreeBSD may already have support for this variant.


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## wblock@ (Feb 21, 2014)

The one re(4) card I was using has an up/down/up bounce on boot with 10-STABLE, but did not with 9-STABLE.  That was enough to affect the firewall startup.


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## Gogeden (Feb 22, 2014)

Just reported the issue: https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/3479
I would love to use FreeBSD itself but I have no clue as to how to sculpt a FreeBSD box into a firewall from scratch. :\


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## Gogeden (Feb 22, 2014)

SirDice said:
			
		

> You may have more luck with the card using something based on a more recent version of FreeBSD. Or by using FreeBSD itself of course. No guarantees on any of the derivatives but it's possible a recent FreeBSD may already have support for this variant.



So I just did some more troubleshooting.
I got the box to connect to the modem but I did some hardware tweaks.

I'm currently using the goofy card as my LAN and the built-in RJ-45 as the WAN and everything is working fine.
I took out the other gigabit card (Both cards use PCI)
However, the built-in RJ-45 is 10/100 and I would rather connect to the modem with one of my gigabit cards.

Could I be having some sort of conflict with the two gigabit cards?

Now, by gigabit cards I mean the card that was f****** up (The Rosewill) and the other gigabit card that worked.
I don't understand this.
What could be the issue?


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