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Why am I suddenly unable to ping or curl a floating IP server from itself?

Posted on April 7, 2017

I have configured a floating IP to point at my server.

When I do: ping <my-floating-ip-address>

It works fine from my computer and from other servers. But when I run the same command from the server itself (i.e. the server currently pointed to by the floating IP), it produces no results.

Uptil yesterday I was able to do a curl from my server to itself via the floating IP. Today I can’t. I haven’t changed any configuration on my side.

Has something changed in the way floating IP addresses work?

I’ll include my firewall settings for completeness, but I haven’t changed them recently and, as I say, it used to work.

Chain INPUT (policy DROP)
target     prot opt source               destination
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere             state RELATED,ESTABLISHED
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere             tcp dpt:http state NEW
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere             tcp dpt:https state NEW
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere             tcp dpt:ssh state NEW
ACCEPT     icmp --  anywhere             anywhere             limit: avg 1/sec burst 5 icmp echo-request

Chain FORWARD (policy DROP)
target     prot opt source               destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination


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Digital Ocean support asked me to try to unassigning and reassigning my floating IP. It worked. (But doesn’t explain why it happened in the first place and whether it will happen again. I hope they will look into it.)

Thanks @david615230 - unassigning and reassigning did the trick for me too.

But having this happen out of the blue today on my production site with no explanation is making me really afraid of using floating ips from DigitalOcean…

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