This unit is at a remote site and it doesn't have a UPS. While I have UPSs at the other locations and yes, I understand that they would be a probable fix, I'm having a hard time believing that cheap residential units or other manufacturers SMB units can gracefully come online and this one can't... Spending hundreds or thousands for a Band-Aid which would eventually run out of power depending on the length of the outage isn't a fix ... all of which leads me to something is wrong with this one. This is my first (only) netgate so I am happy to be told I am overlooking something obvious or doing something dumb :)
I will try to take it offline tonight after office hours and console in to watch while yanking the power out. I have unplugged it numerous times and it comes back up from that though so I'm not sure it will be the same as an outage. I don't know what the difference is though. Theoretically they should produce the same result.
WAN is connected to the cable modem... which is slow to start up and connect. As can some of hte switches. If power comes on to both devices at the same time and the cable modem isn't up yet that could be the difference to me unplugging the router by itself. That is a good idea. Thanks for the suggestion. I will try killing both tonight.
Is there a way to add a startup delay in the netgate? A pause line maybe? If the issue is the rest of the network isn't online yet, that could make sense. I would hope that it would resolve when it detects the rest of the network but if a delay isn't possible maybe an auto-restart of the netgate after 5 mins of no connectivity?