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    loss of speed with pfsense 2.5.1 using Intel(R) PRO/1000 PCI-Express Network Driver

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    • G
      gstlouis @stephenw10
      last edited by

      @stephenw10
      you are correct, to eliminate if the bridge mode on that modem is the problem. I'll be doing this next

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      • G
        gstlouis @A Former User
        last edited by gstlouis

        @silence
        really? I used top to get that view. but if I look at the dashboard it shows the CPU barely working a sweat. I didnt take the pic fast enough but its more along 10 to 11% peak then 3%

        Screen Shot 2021-12-29 at 3.43.21 PM.png

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        • G
          gstlouis @stephenw10
          last edited by gstlouis

          @stephenw10
          so I did pppoe directly from the modem to my mac and I can get the correct speeds. IT was flaying at close to my whopping 6 megs

          Screen Shot 2021-12-29 at 4.37.43 PM.png

          This is around the speeds I want to try to attain.

          It looks to be my router. Any idea or settings that would slow this down? Its a basic setup with a DDNS and some rules for incoming git repo, cams etc.

          I do have another router with pfsense (do not remember if same hardware but I'll check). I'll try this router as well to see if the speeds are degraded as well... a full 2 megs degrade feels like a lot.

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          • J
            jsmiddleton4 @gstlouis
            last edited by

            @gstlouis
            “ Any idea or settings that would slow this down?”

            That the modem needs to be configured to be a very dumb device and the PFSense router doing the heavy lifting.

            Connecting directly the modem with your MAC just tells you the modem is still doing the heavy lifting.

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            • J
              jsmiddleton4 @gstlouis
              last edited by

              @gstlouis

              Might need to set MTU to 1492.

              https://www.metageek.com/training/resources/use-router-with-dsl/

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              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                The modem should be doing the same thing in both situations. The PPPoE client does the wrok and that's running either on the Mac or pfSense.
                pfSense will set an MTU of 1492 automatically for a PPPoE link but it's worth checking that. If you are seeing packet fragmentation it could well lead to the sort of reduction you're seeing.

                Another thing you can test here is running the speedtest-cli client on pfSense itself. That would show up a LAN side issue, though that's very unlikely.
                That is done at the command line like:

                [2.6.0-BETA][admin@cedev-3.stevew.lan]/root: pkg install py38-speedtest-cli
                Updating pfSense-core repository catalogue...
                pfSense-core repository is up to date.
                Updating pfSense repository catalogue...
                pfSense repository is up to date.
                All repositories are up to date.
                The following 1 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):
                
                New packages to be INSTALLED:
                	py38-speedtest-cli: 2.1.3 [pfSense]
                
                Number of packages to be installed: 1
                
                38 KiB to be downloaded.
                
                Proceed with this action? [y/N]: y
                [1/1] Fetching py38-speedtest-cli-2.1.3.pkg: 100%   38 KiB  39.0kB/s    00:01    
                Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
                [1/1] Installing py38-speedtest-cli-2.1.3...
                [1/1] Extracting py38-speedtest-cli-2.1.3: 100%
                [2.6.0-BETA][admin@cedev-3.stevew.lan]/root: rehash
                [2.6.0-BETA][admin@cedev-3.stevew.lan]/root: speedtest-cli
                Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
                Testing from Plusnet (xx.xx.xx.xx)...
                Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
                Selecting best server based on ping...
                Hosted by Vodafone UK (Manchester) [250.93 km]: 21.236 ms
                Testing download speed................................................................................
                Download: 61.65 Mbit/s
                Testing upload speed.....................................................................................................
                .Upload: 18.89 Mbit/s
                

                Steve

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                • G
                  gstlouis @stephenw10
                  last edited by gstlouis

                  @stephenw10 @jsmiddleton4

                  Thank you for your comments.

                  So I did change the MTU, even though Steve says it'll change itself. There was no difference from when I did the speed test. I even tried 1450 MTU just for giggles with no diff.

                  I installed speedtest-cli, super cool, thanks for the rehash command, didn't know that!!

                  What was very interesting is while downloading the speedtest pkg it was pulling at around 7megs!!
                  Screen Shot 2021-12-30 at 12.25.33 PM.png

                  speedtestcli

                  Hosted by Convergia Networks Inc (Pointe-Claire, QC) [196.32 km]: 52.136 ms
                  Testing download speed................................................................................
                  Download: 5.77 Mbit/s
                  Testing upload speed.........................................................................
                  Upload: 0.94 Mbit/s
                  

                  Now that is awesome. A little hard to beleive because I do not think Bell has me a profile that is 7/1 megs but from the cli it says it was downloading at that speed when installing speedtest cli

                  This being said, there has to be something going on from the LAN perspective? I know Steve mentioned this... I don't know how I would start getting into that, but I will start searching online while I can breath and kids are sleeping and my drink has ice.

                  some say this could be HD read write speed. Im on an ssd 16gig

                  [2.5.1-RELEASE][root@router.home]/root: egrep 'da[0-9]|cd[0-9]' /var/run/dmesg.boot
                  ada0 at ahcich0 bus 0 scbus0 target 0 lun 0
                  ada0: <Kston 16GB Q0927A> ACS-2 ATA SATA 3.x device
                  ada0: Serial Number 201906280650
                  ada0: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, UDMA6, PIO 512bytes)
                  ada0: Command Queueing enabled
                  ada0: 15272MB (31277232 512 byte sectors)
                  

                  @stephenw10
                  i wasnt sure about packet fragmentation comment. I do not see packet loss but if i should be looking somewhere else do lmk

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                  • J
                    jsmiddleton4 @gstlouis
                    last edited by jsmiddleton4

                    @gstlouis

                    Just making sure, your tests that show speeds being slow, are you doing so via a wireless device?

                    I wish I could give you some of my bandwidth.

                    Everything I’ve read on DSL Modems when attaching a separate router is the modem needs to be in Transparent Bridge Mode.

                    https://johnpoelstra.com/centurylink-actiontec-c1000a-transparent-bridging/

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                    • G
                      gstlouis @jsmiddleton4
                      last edited by

                      @jsmiddleton4
                      reading that article now

                      yes, I do the test via WIFI, but I've tried wired to my switch. But now that I'm doubting it, I'm going to plug my mac into the router port itself to make sure.

                      Also something I found cool. I removed the Bell modem, called HH1000 modem, from bridge mode for testing to speed again. Then I plugged my router into it and it authenticated. I literally have two WIFI, the bell modem broadcasting and one of my access points fed from my router. So basically two internal networks... weird, but cool because I can play in both. lol

                      I have the same speeds after plugging my mac wired into the router yes.

                      haha thanks for the offer. They say fibe will arrive within 2022, so fingers crossed. loosing 2 megs on a 50 meg line is neglegiable, but I do like to understand things and understanidng why a 2 meg loss for pfsense is a good Tshooting practice. while my time permits of course...

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                      • G gstlouis referenced this topic on
                      • J
                        jsmiddleton4 @gstlouis
                        last edited by

                        @gstlouis

                        Wifi won’t be as fast as wired due to the way wifi works.

                        https://www.quora.com/Is-it-normal-for-a-WiFi-modem-connection-to-give-half-the-download-speed-of-a-wired-connection?share=1

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                        • G
                          gstlouis @jsmiddleton4
                          last edited by

                          @jsmiddleton4
                          regardless, I've tried wired, more than once. Even my torrents files do not peak to what the router can hit on speed.

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                          • stephenw10S
                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                            last edited by

                            At <10Mbps I wouldn't expect wifi to make a noticeable difference. Unless it's 802.11b maybe! 😉

                            Might be time to grab a packet capture and see if there are retransmissions or fragments.

                            Speedtest-cli has never been the most accurate thing IMO. It averages the output. You might want to check the traffic graphs at the same time you're testing.

                            Although the total throughput isn't an issue here you might also try setting net.isr.dispatch to deferred. See: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/hardware/tune.html#pppoe-with-multi-queue-nics

                            Steve

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                            • G
                              gstlouis @stephenw10
                              last edited by

                              @stephenw10

                              I fixed it! This is thanks to another thread on this forum you replied to Steve. Man, I wish I had you on speed dial!

                              You had mentioned to some dude online who was having LAN to WAN speed issues
                              slow-lan-speeds-but-correct-wan-speed

                              For giggles I said what the hell, in case I fiddled with rules or config that caused this slow speed. I setup a LAN2, copy pasted some rules so LAN2 can hit WAN, or LAN2 to really, setup dhcp on it and speed test are now at par with the WAN. I got 2 more megs in my network. lol I'm pumped.

                              I need to understand why my LAN1 is loosing my 2 megs. Slowly, I'll apply my rule sets and see if anything degrades and go from there. I'm very curious and will paste info for anybody out there

                              Anyway, thanks for your time and Happy New Year.

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                              • J
                                jsmiddleton4 @gstlouis
                                last edited by

                                @gstlouis

                                Congrats.

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                                • G
                                  gstlouis @jsmiddleton4
                                  last edited by

                                  @jsmiddleton4
                                  thanks
                                  I appreciated your input too!

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                                  • stephenw10S
                                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                    last edited by

                                    Ah, good test!

                                    So what's different about LAN1 then? You have packages running? Maybe Snort or ntop-ng on LAN1 only?

                                    Steve

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                                    • G
                                      gstlouis @stephenw10
                                      last edited by

                                      @stephenw10
                                      no idea
                                      I do recall installing darkstat, but I did disable it. any other packages can slow down bandwidth ?

                                      Screen Shot 2022-01-01 at 7.30.19 PM.png

                                      stephenw10S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • stephenw10S
                                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator @gstlouis
                                        last edited by stephenw10

                                        Things that actually examine traffic can slow it, so; Snort, Suricata, Squid, Ntop-NG are the prime suspects.

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                                        • G
                                          gstlouis @stephenw10
                                          last edited by gstlouis

                                          @stephenw10
                                          well I disable darkstat, even removed it. It did nothing. I can't see anything else packages wise that would cause this problem as I think I only really install darkstat, and cron...

                                          I found the problem. I had a freaking traffic shaper! A while nack I was fiddling with trying to get a level balance of all primary devices. Once I disabled this I could get my speeds. All that for this!!

                                          Screen Shot 2022-01-02 at 2.26.59 PM.png

                                          well it was a good deep dive I guess, and I sure know what I sohuld be looking for in the future.

                                          Thanks to all

                                          Guy

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