I am not reaching the required speed

gusto

@bingo600
I really can't use bare metal. Proxmox runs a lot of lxc, which I can't turn off for a long time.
Yes Proxmox 7 is built on Debian 11.

@Patch
I installed pfSense according to the instructions.
NICs are burdened by other VMs and LXCs minimally.
I used to test the speed of the internet speedtest.net
All VMs and LXCs are almost always idle.
Measuring internet speed should not affect anything.

stephenw10

There's a good chance you're just at the limit of the hardware. It would not surprise me to see that sort of rate on PPPoE even if you were running bare metal. So with the VM overhead and whatever other loading you have you probably just need more powerful hardware.

Try running top -HaSP at the pfSense command line whilst you're testing. Of either core is hitting 100% you cannot go faster.

Steve

gusto

@stephenw10
During the measurement
top HaSP

last pid: 58660;  load averages:  0.67,  0.43,  0.27  up 9+13:13:59    22:40:44
172 threads:   3 running, 133 sleeping, 36 waiting
CPU 0:  0.1% user,  0.8% nice,  1.0% system,  0.9% interrupt, 97.2% idle
CPU 1:  0.1% user,  0.8% nice,  1.1% system,  0.5% interrupt, 97.5% idle
Mem: 26M Active, 79M Inact, 191M Wired, 97M Buf, 1638M Free
Swap: 512M Total, 512M Free

stephenw10

That's while it's passing 600Mbps?

That's hard to believe. Those numbers are what I'd expect when it's just at idle passing nothing.

gusto

@stephenw10
top -HaSP does not appear to show real-time values. Although I quickly clicked on the execute button, the values did not change much.
Today I did another speed test and saw a value of 700 Mbit.
CPU 79%

stephenw10

The output of top does update in real time. Just run it at the command line (ssh or console) then hit q to quit while the test is running to make it easier to copy/paste the values.

79% total CPU use is far closer to what I expect to see. And that's probably actually near 100% on one core which is the limit you're hitting.

Are you passing through the Realtek NICs in Proxmox?

Steve

gusto

@stephenw10
This is how I set up a network card for WAN (vmbr0).
It is similar for LAN (vmbr1).

f.meunier

@gusto
Hello
Are vmbr0 and vmbr1 attached to different physical NICs in proxmox ?

I had a performance issue on PCengine APU3 systems (looks very similar to odroid H2 ) : I could not get more than 600Mb/s
I swapped to ZOTAC Nano CI (or CA) systems and I managed to get approx. 900Mb/s raw throughput.

Patch

@gusto said in I am not reaching the required speed:

This is how I set up a network card

That is not pass through. You are using a virtual bridge and a virtual network interface to pfsense.

To use pass through implies you dedicate the physical NIC pfsense use to pfsense. See:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Pci_passthrough
https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/Enable_Proxmox_PCIe_Passthrough

To do this you need more physical NIC than the 2 you have.

stephenw10

@patch said in I am not reaching the required speed:

To do this you need more physical NIC than the 2 you have.

...and it still may not help because you're running Realtek NICs and PPPoE. ~680Mbps is about what I expect from that.

Confirm it by running top during a test to see the per core CPU usage. The receive NIC queue is probably at 100%.

Steve