Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense

riahc8

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

johnpoz

@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..

riahc8

@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

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.

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

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.Dig

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

JKnott

@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.

stephenw10

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

riahc8

@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?

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....

stephenw10

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

johnpoz

@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.

riahc8

@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

stephenw10

Install the iperf package in pfSense then run an iperf3 server there. Then test against it using an iperf client on the LAN. I would expect to see Gig line rate there, ~940Mbps, unless you have any traffic shaping in place.

Steve

riahc8

@stephenw10 said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

Install the iperf package in pfSense then run an iperf3 server there. Then test against it using an iperf client on the LAN. I would expect to see Gig line rate there, ~940Mbps, unless you have any traffic shaping in place.

Steve

Hmmm I don't have any ethernet physical LAN clients.

Just VMs and a laptop.

stephenw10

Well you should be able to get Gigabit between pfSense and another VM in the same host.

But that does mean the issue is far more likely to be on the WAN side.

Steve

riahc8

@stephenw10 said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

Well you should be able to get Gigabit between pfSense and another VM in the same host.

But that does mean the issue is far more likely to be on the WAN side.

Steve

Yeah, I believe I can test that out.

riahc8

Sorry about the delay:

Here is a test from a linux VM to the pfsense VM on the same physical host:

Connecting to host 192.168.1.1, port 5201
[ 4] local 192.168.1.71 port 41266 connected to 192.168.1.1 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr Cwnd
[ 4] 0.00-1.00 sec 343 MBytes 2.88 Gbits/sec 0 764 KBytes
[ 4] 1.00-2.00 sec 398 MBytes 3.33 Gbits/sec 0 1.51 MBytes
[ 4] 2.00-3.00 sec 396 MBytes 3.32 Gbits/sec 0 2.03 MBytes
[ 4] 3.00-4.00 sec 394 MBytes 3.30 Gbits/sec 0 2.03 MBytes
[ 4] 4.00-5.00 sec 401 MBytes 3.37 Gbits/sec 0 2.03 MBytes
[ 4] 5.00-6.00 sec 391 MBytes 3.28 Gbits/sec 0 2.03 MBytes
[ 4] 6.00-7.00 sec 400 MBytes 3.36 Gbits/sec 0 2.03 MBytes
[ 4] 7.00-8.00 sec 400 MBytes 3.36 Gbits/sec 0 2.03 MBytes
[ 4] 8.00-9.00 sec 396 MBytes 3.32 Gbits/sec 0 2.03 MBytes
[ 4] 9.00-10.00 sec 396 MBytes 3.32 Gbits/sec 0 2.03 MBytes

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 3.82 GBytes 3.28 Gbits/sec 0 sender
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 3.82 GBytes 3.28 Gbits/sec receiver

iperf Done.

I ran another test from another linux VM to the pfsense BUT they are on different physical hosts:

Connecting to host 192.168.1.1, port 5201
[ 4] local 192.168.1.80 port 42140 connected to 192.168.1.1 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr Cwnd
[ 4] 0.00-1.00 sec 12.2 MBytes 103 Mbits/sec 0 228 KBytes
[ 4] 1.00-2.00 sec 11.4 MBytes 95.6 Mbits/sec 0 228 KBytes
[ 4] 2.00-3.00 sec 11.0 MBytes 92.2 Mbits/sec 0 238 KBytes
[ 4] 3.00-4.00 sec 11.5 MBytes 96.7 Mbits/sec 0 238 KBytes
[ 4] 4.00-5.00 sec 10.9 MBytes 91.7 Mbits/sec 0 238 KBytes
[ 4] 5.00-6.00 sec 11.5 MBytes 96.6 Mbits/sec 0 238 KBytes
[ 4] 6.00-7.00 sec 11.2 MBytes 93.6 Mbits/sec 0 284 KBytes
[ 4] 7.00-8.00 sec 11.3 MBytes 95.1 Mbits/sec 0 298 KBytes
[ 4] 8.00-9.00 sec 11.4 MBytes 95.6 Mbits/sec 0 298 KBytes
[ 4] 9.00-10.00 sec 11.3 MBytes 95.2 Mbits/sec 0 298 KBytes

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 114 MBytes 95.5 Mbits/sec 0 sender
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 112 MBytes 94.2 Mbits/sec receiver

iperf Done.

Does everything look good? I dont know how to interpret this.

Patch

@riahc8 said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

from another linux VM to the pfsense BUT they are on different physical hosts:

@riahc8 said in Gigabit internet PPPoE and pfSense:

95.6 Mbits/sec

??bad cable supporting only 100Mb connection