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    Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • R
      riahc8 @stephenw10
      last edited by riahc8

      @stephenw10 I switched from ISP router to pfSense.

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      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        Ok. What speeds are you seeing now?

        What specs are the VM? NICs, CPU, RAM etc

        johnpozJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • johnpozJ
          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @stephenw10
          last edited by

          @stephenw10 said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

          What specs are the VM?

          Not just VM - what is the VM host, for all we know he is running esxi on some 10 year old laptop ;)

          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
          SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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          • R
            riahc8
            last edited by riahc8

            The VM is runnning on a L5640 @ 2.27GHz, 1 core only, and 2GB of RAM. All on a SSD.

            The NIC is a Intel I350-T4

            johnpozJ P 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • johnpozJ
              johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @riahc8
              last edited by

              @riahc8 said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

              L5640

              The Intel Xeon L5640 that came out in 2010?

              An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
              If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
              Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
              SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

              R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • R
                riahc8 @johnpoz
                last edited by

                @johnpoz said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

                @riahc8 said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

                L5640

                The Intel Xeon L5640 that came out in 2010?

                https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/47926/intel-xeon-processor-l5640-12m-cache-2-26-ghz-5-86-gts-intel-qpi.html

                Thats the spec sheet I believe

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                • R
                  riahc8 @riahc8
                  last edited by

                  This is what is currently sold on the market as pfSense hardware:

                  https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/91533/intel-celeron-processor-j3160-2m-cache-up-to-2-24-ghz.html

                  This is the most powerful Netgear offers:

                  https://shop.netgate.com/products/1541-base-pfsense

                  Comparison

                  https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=47926,91533,91199

                  johnpozJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • johnpozJ
                    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @riahc8
                    last edited by

                    @riahc8 but pfsense isn't running as a vm when it runs on the native hardware.. Your comparing apples to oranges..

                    Again your processor is what like 12 years old..

                    I use to run pfsense on esxi on an old HP microserver, it ran just fine until I up my internet speed. As a VM on that hardware just couldn't push 500..

                    I am not saying it can't do it - but pppoe hasn't been known to be rocket ship on pfsense anyway. I don't use pppoe so I don't follow those threads much.

                    Just pointing out expecting A vm to run full gig on 12 year old processor might be asking a bit much.. @stephenw10 would be the guy that would know..

                    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                    If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                    Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                    SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                    R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • R
                      riahc8 @johnpoz
                      last edited by

                      @johnpoz said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

                      @riahc8 but pfsense isn't running as a vm when it runs on the native hardware.. Your comparing apples to oranges..

                      Again your processor is what like 12 years old..

                      I use to run pfsense on esxi on an old HP microserver, it ran just fine until I up my internet speed. As a VM on that hardware just couldn't push 500..

                      I am not saying it can't do it - but pppoe hasn't been known to be rocket ship on pfsense anyway. I don't use pppoe so I don't follow those threads much.

                      Just pointing out expecting A vm to run full gig on 12 year old processor might be asking a bit much.. @stephenw10 would be the guy that would know..

                      AFAIK, its based on clock speed, isnt it?

                      I been meaning to break out by pfSense into something standalone but cost wise it wasnt worth it

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                      • R
                        riahc8
                        last edited by riahc8

                        BTW, in a virtualized OpenWRT, on the same hardware, it reaches 1Gbps without any issues. I know one is FreeBSD and the other linux but just wanted to state that.

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                        • P
                          Patch @riahc8
                          last edited by Patch

                          @riahc8 said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

                          1 core only, and 2GB of RAM

                          I would start by being more generous with your VM resource allocation. You can not get speed improvements by using multi queuing with a single thread VM.

                          Also this thread should probably be here https://forum.netgate.com/category/33/virtualization where several recent threads describe speed issues with ESXi

                          R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • R
                            riahc8 @Patch
                            last edited by riahc8

                            @patch said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

                            @riahc8 said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

                            1 core only, and 2GB of RAM

                            I would start by being more generous with your VM resource allocation. You can not get speed improvements by using multi queuing with a single thread VM.

                            Also this thread should probably be here https://forum.netgate.com/category/33/virtualization where several recent threads describe speed issues with ESXi

                            I just upped it to 4 cores and 4 GB of ram. Same thing.

                            Bob.DigB JKnottJ 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • Bob.DigB
                              Bob.Dig LAYER 8 @riahc8
                              last edited by

                              @riahc8 Put your OpenWRT in front of pfSense and have a look if it is really PPPoE what is making problems for you.

                              R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • JKnottJ
                                JKnott @riahc8
                                last edited by

                                @riahc8

                                FWIW, I run pfSense on the computer described in my sig. Here's my speedtest from a couple of days ago. This is on a cable modem with a 500/20 connection. So, pfSense is definitely capable, on the appropriate hardware. I wouldn't run a firewall in a VM for security reasons, let alone performance.

                                Incidentally, I used to run pfSense on an old HP compact desktop computer. After it died I bought the current hardware. With the HP I would typically get mid 500s down on speedtest. The new hardware caused a huge increase in performance.

                                PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
                                i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
                                UniFi AC-Lite access point

                                I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

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                                • stephenw10S
                                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                  last edited by

                                  Again, what speeds are you actually seeing?

                                  If it was running baremetal I'd expect to see the at or very close to 1G PPPoE with that CPU given it's single thread numbers.

                                  Steve

                                  R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • R
                                    riahc8 @Bob.Dig
                                    last edited by

                                    @bob-dig said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

                                    @riahc8 Put your OpenWRT in front of pfSense and have a look if it is really PPPoE what is making problems for you.

                                    Ive been giving that some thought and call it a day.......

                                    How would I do this?

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                                    • R
                                      riahc8 @stephenw10
                                      last edited by riahc8

                                      @stephenw10 said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

                                      Again, what speeds are you actually seeing?

                                      If it was running baremetal I'd expect to see the at or very close to 1G PPPoE with that CPU given it's single thread numbers.

                                      Steve

                                      Give or take: Around 8 Mpbs down , and 0.5 Mpbs up..... Awful speeds as you can tell....

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                                      • stephenw10S
                                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                        last edited by

                                        Ah, OK! Yeah that's not a single thread PPPoE limitation. That looks more like a link speed/duplex mismatch somewhere. Throughput that low has to be some low level mis-configuration.

                                        I would try testing to/from the firewall directly with iperf to determine which interface is at fault. If it's not both.

                                        Steve

                                        johnpozJ R 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • johnpozJ
                                          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @stephenw10
                                          last edited by

                                          @stephenw10 said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

                                          That looks more like a link speed/duplex mismatch somewhere

                                          Was thinking the same thing ;) yeah such horrible speed has to be more than just some cpu bottleneck or pppoe performance hit.

                                          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                          SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • R
                                            riahc8 @stephenw10
                                            last edited by

                                            @stephenw10 said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

                                            Ah, OK! Yeah that's not a single thread PPPoE limitation. That looks more like a link speed/duplex mismatch somewhere. Throughput that low has to be some low level mis-configuration.

                                            I would try testing to/from the firewall directly with iperf to determine which interface is at fault. If it's not both.

                                            Steve

                                            How would I properly test it? Could you please tell me a example so I can post the results?

                                            Thank you

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