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    6100 10g port and vlans maxing at 1g speed

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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

      Mmm, 941Mbps is too close to 1G 'line rate' to be a coincidence IMO.

      Running iperf to/from the firewall itself will always be a worse result that testing through the firewall. But it can be a useful test as long as you realise the limitations.
      So here we can see the Servers interface must be linked at more than 1G but we can't actually see if the LAN is from the results shown.

      Steve

      S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • S
        SpaceBass @stephenw10
        last edited by SpaceBass

        Here's some additional details:

        All of these subnets are vLANs off the ix0 10g interface.
        I know that means I'm running "on a stick" (so to speak) but shouldn't I at least get close to half of the port's speed?

        Here's a test from LAN (10.15.1.0/24) to vLAN 1012 (10.15.100.0/24). There are ANY/ANY rules for IPV4* on both interfaces.

        ╰─○ iperf3 -c 10.15.100.18
        
        [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
        [  5]   0.00-10.00  sec   521 MBytes   437 Mbits/sec                  sender
        [  5]   0.00-10.00  sec   518 MBytes   434 Mbits/sec                  receiver
        

        Here's a test from LAN to another host on LAN

        ╰─○ iperf3 -c 10.15.1.5
        [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
        [  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  10.9 GBytes  9.36 Gbits/sec                  sender
        [  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  10.9 GBytes  9.35 Gbits/sec                  receiver
        

        These remote hosts are on the same 10g switch (Unifi Aggregation Switch) as the pfSense appliance.

        I'm using default 1500 MTU.

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        • D
          dnavas
          last edited by

          It's fine, I've got the same setup. I also often use "-R" to run the traffic back, depending on the speed of the hosts involved.

          I would definitely up your MTU to 9k. The CPU is capable of a little over 600k packets per second per core, which at 1500b packets is about what you are seeing. It would be exciting if pfsense every got the tnsr routing speeds for handling LAN routing, but until then, MTU is your friend for managing peak bandwidth.

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          • stephenw10S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            Hmm, I expect to see more than that. What does the CPU usage look like when you're testing?

            What does top -HaSP at the command line show?

            Steve

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            • S
              SpaceBass @stephenw10
              last edited by

              @stephenw10 said in 6100 10g port and vlans maxing at 1g speed:

              top -HaSP

              Looks like at least two core get pegged. Ran a test on two hosts between 10.15.1.0/24 and 10.15.100.0/24

              /root: top -HaSP
              last pid: 53556;  load averages:  1.27,  0.75,  0.55    up 1+21:18:12  22:35:13
              656 threads:   8 running, 631 sleeping, 17 waiting
              CPU 0:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  100% system,  0.0% interrupt,  0.0% idle
              CPU 1:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  100% system,  0.0% interrupt,  0.0% idle
              CPU 2:  1.2% user,  0.0% nice, 51.0% system,  0.0% interrupt, 47.8% idle
              CPU 3:  1.2% user,  0.0% nice,  2.7% system,  0.0% interrupt, 96.1% idle
              Mem: 297M Active, 570M Inact, 715M Wired, 6225M Free
              ARC: 357M Total, 88M MFU, 265M MRU, 32K Anon, 1149K Header, 3206K Other
                   132M Compressed, 291M Uncompressed, 2.20:1 Ratio
              
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              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                Hmm, you see that load with only ~500Mbps passing?

                Does it show what process is using that in the full top output? ntop-ng perhaps?

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • S
                  SpaceBass
                  last edited by

                  @stephenw10 said in 6100 10g port and vlans maxing at 1g speed:

                  Hmm, you see that load with only ~500Mbps passing?

                  Does it show what process is using that in the full top output? ntop-ng perhaps?

                  It looks like it is if_io_tqg ... not sure what that is?
                  I ensured all SNMP is disabled, I uninstalled ntop-ng, still getting less than 1Gbit/sec

                  PID USERNAME    PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
                    0 root        -76    -     0B   736K CPU2     2 191:10  99.79% [kernel{if_io_tqg_2}]
                    0 root        -76    -     0B   736K CPU3     3 190:40  99.79% [kernel{if_io_tqg_3}]
                    0 root        -76    -     0B   736K -        0 223:36  95.08% [kernel{if_io_tqg_0}]
                    0 root        -76    -     0B   736K -        1 182:50  72.32% [kernel{if_io_tqg_1}]
                   11 root        155 ki31     0B    64K RUN      1  57.7H  19.83% [idle{idle: cpu1}]
                  
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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    Those are the NIC driver queues which is where the load for routing and filtering should appear.
                    But you should easily be able to pass 1Gbps there.

                    Do you see the same restriction between other interfaces?

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                    • S
                      SpaceBass @stephenw10
                      last edited by

                      @stephenw10 I'm only using one 10g interface. I'll try the 2nd one and report back.

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                      • D
                        dnavas
                        last edited by dnavas

                        Learning a lot watching this thread.
                        That said, I'm not expecting more than 620ish kpps. Would be happy to be proven wrong!
                        https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2021/11/26/netgate-6100.html

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                        • S
                          SpaceBass @dnavas
                          last edited by

                          @dnavas
                          interesting! A lot of that post is beyond my level of expertise. But is if fair to infer from your findings that you never got full 10gb speed when routing across networks?

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                          • stephenw10S
                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                            last edited by

                            The 6100 will not pass 10Gbps. There are many variables but I expect to see in the 3-4Gbps between the two 10G NICs.
                            But you are seeing a restriction at a far lower level. Even given the single TCP stream and tha5t it's between VLANs on the same NIC I expect to see more.
                            I'm setting up my own test now...

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                            • S
                              SpaceBass @stephenw10
                              last edited by SpaceBass

                              @stephenw10 said in 6100 10g port and vlans maxing at 1g speed:

                              The 6100 will not pass 10Gbps.

                              Interesting
                              Does that mean, in the context of this marketing language: IPERF3 Traffic: 18.50 Gbps, 18.50 Gpbs only refers to LAN <-> WAN? I mean, that'd be bottlenecked by the 10g ports, right? So is that some sort of WAN LAGG setup?

                              What about this: IPERF3 Traffic: 9.93 Gbps does that just mean LAN <-> WAN with firewalls rules? Not routing across subnets?

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                              • stephenw10S
                                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                last edited by

                                The 18.5Gbps figure is a total throughput (all interfaces) value for large packets (iperf, 1500B) of forwarding traffic. Without filtering.

                                For a single TCP stream when hairpinned on the same interface using VLANs you hit the additional complication of loading the queues/cores. You will probably find you see different results if you repeat the test with a single iperf stream. The throughput is better when the send and receive queues fall to different CPU cores. Testing with multiple streams avoid that, I usually use -P 4 since it's a 4 core CPU.

                                This is the loading I see when testing between VLANs on the ix0 port:

                                last pid: 81510;  load averages:  1.36,  0.81,  0.56                                                                                      up 16+18:48:27  18:33:43
                                670 threads:   10 running, 623 sleeping, 4 zombie, 33 waiting
                                CPU 0:  0.4% user,  0.0% nice, 20.4% system, 15.7% interrupt, 63.5% idle
                                CPU 1:  2.7% user,  0.0% nice,  1.2% system, 67.8% interrupt, 28.2% idle
                                CPU 2:  7.5% user,  0.0% nice,  5.1% system, 58.4% interrupt, 29.0% idle
                                CPU 3:  0.4% user,  0.0% nice, 10.2% system, 19.2% interrupt, 70.2% idle
                                Mem: 1233M Active, 211M Inact, 1230M Laundry, 761M Wired, 4272M Free
                                ARC: 357M Total, 242M MFU, 106M MRU, 296K Anon, 1610K Header, 6869K Other
                                     117M Compressed, 291M Uncompressed, 2.48:1 Ratio
                                Swap: 1024M Total, 364M Used, 660M Free, 35% Inuse
                                
                                  PID USERNAME    PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
                                   12 root        -72    -     0B   560K CPU3     3   3:41  81.58% [intr{swi1: netisr 0}]
                                   12 root        -72    -     0B   560K CPU0     0   2:47  72.43% [intr{swi1: netisr 3}]
                                   11 root        155 ki31     0B    64K RUN      3 385.9H  70.77% [idle{idle: cpu3}]
                                   11 root        155 ki31     0B    64K RUN      0 387.1H  66.14% [idle{idle: cpu0}]
                                   11 root        155 ki31     0B    64K RUN      1 385.7H  32.37% [idle{idle: cpu1}]
                                   11 root        155 ki31     0B    64K RUN      2 386.0H  30.00% [idle{idle: cpu2}]
                                    0 root        -76    -     0B   960K CPU0     0   1:40  17.55% [kernel{if_io_tqg_0}]
                                    0 root        -76    -     0B   960K -        3   1:06  11.07% [kernel{if_io_tqg_3}]
                                

                                That's between two 1G clients but with the port linked to a switch at 10G.
                                It passes 1G as expected:

                                [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
                                [  5]   0.00-60.00  sec  1.60 GBytes   230 Mbits/sec                  receiver
                                [  8]   0.00-60.00  sec  1.65 GBytes   237 Mbits/sec                  receiver
                                [ 10]   0.00-60.00  sec  1.62 GBytes   232 Mbits/sec                  receiver
                                [ 12]   0.00-60.00  sec  1.62 GBytes   232 Mbits/sec                  receiver
                                [SUM]   0.00-60.00  sec  6.50 GBytes   930 Mbits/sec                  receiver
                                

                                ntop-ng is also running on that box but not on either interface in the test.

                                Steve

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                                • S
                                  SpaceBass @stephenw10
                                  last edited by

                                  @stephenw10
                                  I do see a difference with -P 4 vs -P 1

                                  4 streams I get about 1.5Gbits/sec and with 1 stream I get 650Mbits/sec.

                                  Does that lead us to conclude that, when using a single 10g interface for VLANs, I will never get more than about 1.5 Gbits/sec because of processor constraints?

                                  Would I see better performance if I put some of the vLANS on ix1 (the other 10g interface)?

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                                  • stephenw10S
                                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                    last edited by

                                    Yes, I would expect to see better performance routing between different NICs. Especially for single TCP connections.

                                    One interesting thing though is that your top output does not appear to show the interrupt load like mine does. It could just be missing from your screenshot but that would also imply is using less CPU time than the NIC queues unlike in my test. I wonder if you have something else running that appears as load there. Traffic shaping maybe?

                                    Steve

                                    S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • S
                                      SpaceBass @stephenw10
                                      last edited by

                                      @stephenw10 here's the full output:

                                      from 10.15.1.111/24

                                      command:

                                      iperf3 -c 10.15.100.18 -P 4
                                      
                                      last pid: 30212;  load averages:  1.42,  0.65,  0.48                                                     up 3+21:37:16  22:54:17
                                      649 threads:   8 running, 624 sleeping, 17 waiting
                                      CPU 0:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  100% system,  0.0% interrupt,  0.0% idle
                                      CPU 1:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  100% system,  0.0% interrupt,  0.0% idle
                                      CPU 2:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice, 57.3% system,  0.0% interrupt, 42.7% idle
                                      CPU 3:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  100% system,  0.0% interrupt,  0.0% idle
                                      Mem: 209M Active, 515M Inact, 751M Wired, 6332M Free
                                      ARC: 368M Total, 90M MFU, 272M MRU, 32K Anon, 1218K Header, 4383K Other
                                           136M Compressed, 305M Uncompressed, 2.24:1 Ratio
                                      
                                        PID USERNAME    PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
                                          0 root        -76    -     0B   736K CPU1     1 251:45  99.85% [kernel{if_io_tqg_1}]
                                          0 root        -76    -     0B   736K CPU3     3 282:09  99.85% [kernel{if_io_tqg_3}]
                                          0 root        -76    -     0B   736K CPU0     0 316:09  99.75% [kernel{if_io_tqg_0}]
                                          0 root        -76    -     0B   736K -        2 259:37  58.90% [kernel{if_io_tqg_2}]
                                         11 root        155 ki31     0B    64K RUN      2  83.9H  39.69% [idle{idle: cpu2}]
                                          0 root        -92    -     0B   736K -        0  12:48   0.39% [kernel{dummynet}]
                                      16464 root         20    0    15M  5916K CPU2     2   0:00   0.16% top -HaSP
                                       3134 root         20    0    19M  8156K select   2   0:08   0.12% /usr/local/sbin/openvpn --config /var/etc/openvpn/server21/co
                                        387 root         20    0    12M  3120K bpf      2  11:26   0.10% /usr/local/sbin/filterlog -i pflog0 -p /var/run/filterlog.pid
                                       4703 avahi        20    0    13M  4152K select   2   6:30   0.09% avahi-daemon: running [washington.local] (avahi-daemon)
                                       1183 root         20    0    16M  7516K select   2   4:54   0.08% /usr/local/sbin/openvpn --config /var/etc/openvpn/client15/co
                                      97937 root         20    0    11M  2816K select   2  18:30   0.08% /usr/sbin/syslogd -s -c -c -l /var/dhcpd/var/run/log -P /var/
                                          0 root        -76    -     0B   736K -        2   3:28   0.06% [kernel{if_config_tqg_0}]
                                         24 root        -16    -     0B    16K -        2   3:12   0.04% [rand_harvestq]
                                      72462 root         20    0    17M  7564K select   2   1:40   0.04% /usr/local/sbin/openvpn --config /var/etc/openvpn/client14/co
                                         12 root        -60    -     0B   272K WAIT     2   2:02   0.04% [intr{swi4: clock (0)}]
                                      
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                                      • stephenw10S
                                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                        last edited by

                                        Hmm, interesting. The 6100 I tested with is a test device I use for many things, it has a lot of config on it. I'll have to default it tomorrow and retest.
                                        I'll try to get some results from 10G clients too.

                                        Steve

                                        S 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • S
                                          SpaceBass @stephenw10
                                          last edited by

                                          @stephenw10 thanks for all the help and testing!

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • D
                                            dnavas
                                            last edited by dnavas

                                            @spacebass I don't recall, tbh. The article would seem to indicate not, but in reality most of my early connectivity issues were due to the bridge. I have just moved my data plane (servers) from my management plane (switches/gateways/etc), so I can retest across vlans easier.

                                            On my 6100 w/ MTU of 1500, I'm getting a peak of about 850Mbps with one thread and 2.5Gbps with four. With an MTU of 9000 I'm getting a peak of 4.4Gbps with one thread and 9.91Gbps with four (I think it's pretty close to saturated with just two).

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