Jails + eero

[geekmiki]

Hi,

I have a FreeNAS server with several jails connected to my Eero gateway (mesh wifi setup). The jails are on the same subnet as the rest of LAN.

The problem is that the jails are only accessible from devices directly connected to the gateway (Ethernet or WiFi). Whenever I try to access these from another eero around the house (I have in 3 total - 1 gateway, 2 leafs), those jails (and only those jails - rest of LAN is OK) are not accessible.

Here comes the strange part: If I ping a device on a leaf from one of the jails it finds the route and then I'm able to access the jail from that device connected to the leaf for about 10 mins. After that the route is lost again, and the device can't access the jail.

The FreeNAS server itself is always accessible, from any point of the network.

I posted on Eero forums and an Eero engineer mentioned that I had a problem with proxy ARP through jail boundaries.

Has anyone experienced something similar?

Thanks

 

[dlavigne]

Were you able to figure this out?

 

[geekmiki]

No, unfortunately not... Still waiting for some comments here that could point me in the right direction.

 

[jtdidaho]

I have a similar experience involving FreeNAS jails and Eero wireless.

I have just recently completed burnin of my first FreeNAS build and started configuring a jail for running Plex. I use Eero to provide WiFi, although my Eero are using my switched hardwire network for backhaul; I use a pfSense box as my home router. My FreeNAS, the plex jail, and the Eero are all on the same subnet.

After initial success in getting a plex server configured in a jail and being able to access it from the laptop I was utilizing, the jail became unreachable. Similar to your experience, I could access the FreeNAS server itself from the laptop but not the jail and after I issued a ping from the jail to one of the ips of my Eero I was able to access the jail from the laptop. I did notice that the jail was accessible from another hardwired connection the whole time.

So while I do not have any hints to offer currently I am beginning to work on what I believe is essentially the same issue. Guess I'll start by looking at arp requests.

 

[jtdidaho]

A bit of an update after spending some time looking at this over the last hour or so. The problem would seem to specifically relate to the Eero devices themselves. I have fairly extensively sniffed at various point in my network, observed arp request/reply traffic, tested both wired and wireless clients, and configured a separate wireless network using an older Airport Express.

I could observe the arp request/reply for the jail from in front of the FreeNAS box, so the the FreeNAS box behaved as it should. Wired clients on my networks experienced no issues in the process -- i.e. requests were made and replies were received. Wireless clients served from the eero access points would make the arp request but the reply would not be received. Wireless clients served from the Airport Express experienced no issues -- arp requests were made proper replies were received.

I've contacted Eero support documenting the issue and await their reply. Having isolated the behavior as best I could, it would certainly appear to be specific to the how the eero behaves.

 

[geekmiki]

Hi, did you receive a reply from Eero regarding the issue you described?

 

[jtdidaho]

I received acknowledgment that my debugging would initially indicate a potential issue with the eero software, a request for more detail regarding my network layout and a statement regarding the case being assigned to a technical engineer.

My current work around is simply maintaining a separate wireless network for my clients that access the freenas based plex media server jail (two iPads and a laptop I use for testing). Certainly not idea but I needed to move forward. I'm hoping to hear from their engineer soon as it has been than a week now since I provided the requested information.

 

[GrantWilson]

Hello,

I've been searching for the information on Eero forum and reddit - nope, can't find the solution. I have eero in bridge mode, an xFinity fiber and router + Freenas server with several jails. The wireless clients could not access the jails. However, they had an access to the server directly. I tried to set up a static route on the box using netsh. So that the Windows clients could access the jail.

 

[GrantWilson]

A bit of an update after spending some time looking at this over the last hour or so. The problem would seem to specifically relate to the Eero devices themselves. I have fairly extensively sniffed at various point in my network, observed arp request/reply traffic, tested both wired and wireless clients, and configured a separate wireless network using an older Airport Express.


I could observe the arp request/reply for the jail from in front of the FreeNAS box, so the the FreeNAS box behaved as it should. Wired clients on my networks experienced no issues in the process -- i.e. requests were made and replies were received. Wireless clients served from the Airport Express experienced no issues -- arp requests were made proper replies were received. Wireless clients buy essay cheap from experts and the eero access points would make the arp request but the reply would not be received.


I've contacted Eero support documenting the issue and await their reply. Having isolated the behavior as best I could, it would certainly appear to be specific to the how the eero behaves.

Btw, how can contact Eero support directly? I followed the link from the Eero forum, but my antivirus blocked it immediately with a warning message.

 

[imush]

Did anyone resolve this issue? I used to have it on and off, but after the latest eero updates (or perhaps the u3 FreeNAS update) my jailed services cannot ping devices on wifi or vice versa but they can communicate with hardwired ethernet devices on the same network.

I have a FreeNAS server with a couple of jailed services (minim media server and a dns server) plugged in to gateway eero via ethernet. The problem is that my jail IPs cannot be seen by mobile devices using wifi on the eero network. But they work fine with the hardwired devices (e.g. Oppo BDP-105 CD player or mac computer).

Moreover, I get no ping from a jail to any wifi device or vice versa. But the jails see each other and any other hardwired computer on the network.

All devices, including those on wifi can see the FreeNAS server address itself, but not the jail IPs.

All devices, including the jailed services use DHCP on the gateway eero.

Eero app acknowledges all the hosts on its network (including the jails) with correct addresses.

I found similar past complaints, but no resolution in any of them, e.g. here: https://www.reddit.com/r/eero/comments/7s61l3/eero_freenas_jails/

 

[pasamio]

I have a similar issue and gave up on getting the Eero to work consistently. I bought them to replace my Apple Airport infrastructure but gave up trying to figure out how to get them to work with my jails and bought some extra Airports as spares since they work properly. Given it's been years I don't have much hope and reading that reddit post gives me even less hope that Eero care about the issue given how combative they were.

 

[imush]

I did not get a good response from eero and gave up on them. Switched to the Netgear Orbi mesh, everything works out of the box without problems. I wish there were a pfSense mesh solution, but the convenience of a self adjusting mesh beats my desire to tinker with routers.

 

[thepixelgeek]

Till now, I was banging my head trying to figure out why I couldn’t connect to the jail IP.

I’ll be dropping eero for unifi ap’s.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I can wholeheartedly recommend Unifi. There's a FreeNAS plugin for the controller software.

 

[johnnyP]

I was wondering if the eero/jails issue has ever been resolved. I find I have to go into the jail and execute “arp -da” to be able to access the jail again when using the eero network.

 

[Jailer]

Given as many replies in this thread that had the same issue and only with eero I'm not so sure I'd expect any help with this. Sounds like an eero issue that eero has no interest in solving.

 

[wootness]

I created a cron job to run "arp -da" command every 20 minutes for each jail via iocage exec <jailname> arp -da. Seems to do the trick for now on TrueNAS-12.0-U3

 

[thatsthequy]

I started using TrueNAS on an eero network about two years ago, and have never run into this issue. I setup static IPs on the jail interfaces, and setup IP reservations in the eero app for the IPs being used by the jails. Is your setup similar? See links for screenshots, I use HomeBridge, Plex MS, and Transmission with this setup.

 

[Ericloewe]

Please post images directly to the forum. External image hosts are not allowed for a variety of reasons.

 

[thatsthequy]

Apologies! See images below.