Uggh. Turns out it was a software issue on the Windows host I was using to test the speeds. Rogue "optimizer" software that came bundled with my motherboard drivers was causing the upload speed issues. I figured it out when I tested on a Linux box on the same LAN and the speeds were perfect. Hope this helps someone else down the road.

Finally got it solved! There were a number of issues, some of which I'm still dealing with.

I ended up replacing my setup with an unused Dell desktop with PCIe slots. The hardware is slightly better than my tiny Lenovo box, so no harm there. I installed two PCIe EXPI9301CT Intel NIC's. Did a fresh install, restored my config and was back up and running. After that I ran another test and I was getting 150 Mbps down and 50 Mbps up!! I'm pretty sure we're paying for 120/40, so I can't complain about those numbers. So as many suspected, I am now pretty convinced the issue was with the USB NIC. The other hint is the fact that on the dashboard both LAN and WAN are showing as 1000baseT <full-duplex>. On my old Lenovo setup with the USB NIC as my LAN, the LAN did not show that information at all on the dashboard or under the interface info.

After solving that, I still had sub 100 Mbps speed on some PC's. In some cases, it turned out being bad cabling, in another case a bad switch, so by going though it on a case by case basis, I'm slowly getting my network up to speed, no pun intended.

Thanks for all the responses and help!

Raffi</full-duplex>

Opened up a bug report, seemed like the right thing to do
https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/8139

@jjoaquina:

I do believe the time spent to have this working is beyond acceptable.
I think I'm just going to switch the display off despite some policies I should follow indicates the other way.
Thanks you all for your insights!

Run an old windows machine and ssh in using putty. Set the screensaver on that machine to work the way your want.

The BSD install is manicured to be a firewall and certain elements may or may not be there from release to release. You can never count of non standard elements/add ons to work post upgrade.      ;)

You will only get the assign interfaces prompt if you are not using common nics. pfSense will auto assign em, igb, and other commonly used nics.

Not that I know of.  Post questions/issues either here in General Questions or Virtualization.

@DennisT:

We already use OpenDNS but that isn't effective unless the attacker is using DNS (which many don't).

Thanks !!! Just fine like that.
This one goes to my ;D list …

Well, your server issues are not pfSense issues. Need to do whatever it is that they support.

Comes down to what method of sharing your your going to use.. Just simple windows sharing of the printer SMB? or IPP, or 9100 which is common jetdirect port.

But yes you would need firewall rule to allow whatever port/protocol you use to access the shared printer.  From a security point of view this normally not all that bad of thing - you limit who has access to the printer, and its just a printer.

Is your printer not able to just direct connect to the network via wire or wireless.. USB printers are pretty old school if you ask me..  Even your $70 throw away inkjets come with wifi normally these days.

Just run a packet capture on tcp port 110 on WAN and run another shields up test.

If you do not see the traffic on the WAN port, shields up is seeing a response from something upstream.

AFAIK the only way of doing this is Diagnostics -> Backup & Restore -> Config History and do a diff between changes and create individual user ids.

Increase the Configuration Backup Cache Settings size too.

thank you PiBa

Amazing.

yet something else to ponder:

Tried to unistall a package and it failed.

>>> Removing pfSense-pkg-ntopng... pkg-static: Warning: Major OS version upgrade detected.  Running "pkg-static install -f pkg" recommended Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting) Deinstallation has been requested for the following 1 packages (of 0 packages in the universe): Installed packages to be REMOVED: pfSense-pkg-ntopng-0.8.10 Number of packages to be removed: 1 [1/1] Deinstalling pfSense-pkg-ntopng-0.8.10... Warning: Module 'session' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'bcmath' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'ctype' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'curl' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'dom' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'filter' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'gettext' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'hash' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'json' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'ldap' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'mbstring' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'mcrypt' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'openssl' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'pcntl' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'pfSense' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'posix' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'radius' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'readline' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'rrd' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'shmop' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'sqlite3' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'ssh2' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'xml' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'xmlwriter' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'zlib' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'zmq' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'suhosin' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'xmlreader' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Removing ntopng components... Menu items... done. Services... done. Loading package instructions... Deinstall commands... done. [1/1] Deleting files for pfSense-pkg-ntopng-0.8.10: ........ done Warning: Module 'session' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'bcmath' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'ctype' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'curl' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'dom' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'filter' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'gettext' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'hash' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'json' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'ldap' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'mbstring' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'mcrypt' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'openssl' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'pcntl' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'pfSense' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'posix' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'radius' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'readline' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'rrd' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'shmop' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'sqlite3' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'ssh2' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'xml' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'xmlwriter' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'zlib' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'zmq' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'suhosin' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Module 'xmlreader' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Removing ntopng components... Configuration... done. >>> Removing stale packages..

Very close to just wiping it and reloading it.

In case anybody runs into this issue, it was caused by having the time sync services turned on in Hyper-V. We disabled the time sync services offered by Hyper-V (in the Hyper-V manager) and the issue went away.