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    6100 SLOW in comparison to Protectli FW6E

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Official Netgate® Hardware
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    • M
      manilx @stephenw10
      last edited by

      @stephenw10 Feodo Tracker Botnet C2 IP Rules
      ABUSE.ch SSL Blacklist Rules
      emerging-ciarmy.rules
      emerging-compromised.rules
      emerging-drop.rules
      emerging-dshield.rules
      emerging-malware.rules
      emerging-mobile_malware.rules
      emerging-phishing.rules
      emerging-trojan.rules
      emerging-worm.rules

      And this:
      ScreenShot 2023-02-11 at 00.10.17.png

      Netgate 8200max

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      • S
        SteveITS Galactic Empire @manilx
        last edited by

        @manilx said in 6100 SLOW in comparison to Protectli FW6E:

        I HAVE open ports and therefore was running on WAN

        For reference, having open ports is kind of irrelevant...the inbound packets would be scanned on the LAN side anyway, and dropped there so won't get to devices. See the comment in this post by the package maintainer, on putting IDS on LAN.

        Also, Spamhaus DROP, etc. lists of IPs can be handled in firewall rules via pfBlockerNG(-devel) lists. DShield is in the ET_Block list there. That would pull the packet checking out of Suricata, might help a bit.

        Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
        When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
        Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

        M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • M
          manilx @SteveITS
          last edited by

          @steveits Thanks for all the info.
          I have removed rules I had in pfblockedng, put Suricata on the LAN side.
          Helped and I'm now at 700+ but far from 920 without it.
          I'm now wonderin if I should use it at all and if it really is needed (on LAN) to protect my open ports.

          Netgate 8200max

          S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • S
            SteveITS Galactic Empire @manilx
            last edited by

            @manilx Usually one can adjust the rulesets to only what they need, e.g. a web server doesn’t need SQL rules in front of it. Also encrypted traffic like HTTPS can’t be scanned, it just passes through.

            Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
            When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
            Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

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            • M
              manilx @SteveITS
              last edited by

              @steveits What would you suggest to activate as rules for:
              NFS
              Plex
              Emby

              Appreciate your help.

              Netgate 8200max

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              • bmeeksB
                bmeeks
                last edited by bmeeks

                If you are using Suricata with Inline IPS Mode, you may notice a throughput improvement by switching the Suricata runmode from "autofp" to "workers" on the INTERFACE SETTINGS tab.

                The "workers" runmode can work better with netmap. The default runmode is "autofp" as that is a good general purpose starting point, but some configurations will benefit by switching to "workers". Any change you make to the runmode requires restarting Suricata on the interface before it is effective.

                I am interested in what impact switching the runmode has for you, so please report back in this thread. "Workers" mode is best for multi-queue NICs.

                Also, if you don't mind, please post the hardware specs (CPU type and speed, particularly) of the Protectli unit you had previously.

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                • M
                  manilx @bmeeks
                  last edited by

                  @bmeeks Did that change and it did a HUGE boost!
                  I had only snort rules with IPS balanced and policy and had 815 download. After changing this setting it maxed out at 935 which is near the maximum I get. I will again select more rules I had before and recheck the speed now.

                  The Protectli was a FW6E – 6 Port Intel® i7
                  Intel i7 8550U Quad Core with Hyperthreading (8 threads) at up to 4GHz (turbo boost)
                  Dual DDR4 memory up to 64GB
                  mSATA and/or 2.5″ solid state drive
                  6 Intel® Gigabit Ethernet NIC ports
                  AES-NI

                  Netgate 8200max

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                  • M
                    manilx
                    last edited by

                    @manilx I have reenabled the emerging-3coresec as a test.
                    Run speedtest and got full download speed of 930. Excellent!

                    BUT in the middle of repeating that I lost access to the 6100, no ping. LED was blinking blue, normal.
                    Scary!
                    Powered it off by 5s press to power button. Got an orange LED.
                    Various tries to power it on by 5s press were uncuccessful. Pulled the power plug.
                    Turned on again.

                    Repeated tests. 930 download.

                    Netgate 8200max

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                    • M
                      manilx @manilx
                      last edited by

                      @manilx After some more speedtests the unit died on me twice again! Completely unstable.

                      This setting kills it after a short while.
                      Rolling back to a zfs snapshot.

                      Netgate 8200max

                      bmeeksB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • bmeeksB
                        bmeeks @manilx
                        last edited by bmeeks

                        @manilx:
                        What were the NICs in the Protectli?

                        There are some open iflib issues with some of the Intel NICs in FreeBSD.

                        A little surprised workers mode locks up, but it does make me curious. On the Suricata Redmine site some OPNsense users have a similar issue, and OPNsense defaults to workers runmode. We have been trying to determine why.

                        Their issue is triggered by heavy traffic such as a speed test. Would be interested if you can just let it run a bit with normal traffic flow. Also make sure all hardware offloadings are disabled. That is very critical with inline IPS mode.

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                        • M
                          manilx @bmeeks
                          last edited by

                          @bmeeks Protectli had Intel NIC's as I posted above.

                          Yes, it's definitely caused by heavy traffic. But I can't do more tests here. I NEED a stable system. I have nightly backups running from my company.
                          All hardware offloadings were/are disabled.

                          Netgate 8200max

                          bmeeksB 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • bmeeksB
                            bmeeks @manilx
                            last edited by

                            @manilx said in 6100 SLOW in comparison to Protectli FW6E:

                            Protectli had Intel NIC's as I posted above.

                            Can you give me the exact model or else the specific FreeBSD driver being used? For example, em, igb, ix, etc.? All Intel NICs are not using the same driver in FreeBSD.

                            M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • bmeeksB
                              bmeeks @manilx
                              last edited by bmeeks

                              @manilx said in 6100 SLOW in comparison to Protectli FW6E:

                              Yes, it's definitely caused by heavy traffic.

                              Unfortunately, I don't have a test bed that seems able to reproduce the problem. Ditto for the upstream Suricata developer working on this same issue. And not even the OPNsense principal developer has been able to duplicate the stall/hang so far as I know. But there is a European user posting in the Suricata Redmine thread here that can reliably reproduce the problem. He is using a virtual environment, so virtual NIC drivers instead of actual hardware.

                              There is obviously an issue, but so far we have been unable to identify the cause so we can fix it. The first step is being able to reliably reproduce the stall/hang, and thus far that has not been done on a developer's machine 😞.

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                              • M
                                manilx @bmeeks
                                last edited by

                                @bmeeks https://eu.protectli.com/product/fw6e/

                                Interfaces were em0 and em1

                                This unit is a 6100. The freeze has got me panicked and I really can't afford it to loose connectivity "at random"

                                Netgate 8200max

                                bmeeksB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • M
                                  manilx @bmeeks
                                  last edited by

                                  @bmeeks Perhaps netgate can provide you a 6100 for this. It's in their interest also as pfsense is only as good as the packages.....

                                  Netgate 8200max

                                  bmeeksB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • bmeeksB
                                    bmeeks @manilx
                                    last edited by bmeeks

                                    @manilx said in 6100 SLOW in comparison to Protectli FW6E:

                                    @bmeeks https://eu.protectli.com/product/fw6e/

                                    Interfaces were em0 and em1

                                    This unit is a 6100. The freeze has got me panicked and I really can't afford it to loose connectivity "at random"

                                    Understand. My request was just "if possible", but I certainly appreciate the need for stability.

                                    Some other questions, though, if you will answer them --

                                    On the Protectli hardware, were you also using Inline IPS Mode and able to achieve essentially line-rate speed tests on the Gigabit link with Suricata running? I think that answer is "yes" from reading your posts in this thread, but I want to be sure.

                                    And you say the Protectli Ethernet drivers were the em interfaces. That is potentially a valuable clue as like I said previously, there are some differences in the drivers that support Intel NIC families on FreeBSD.

                                    I have shared your experience in the Suricata Redmine issue thread I referenced earlier.

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                                    • M
                                      manilx @bmeeks
                                      last edited by

                                      @bmeeks ANY questions you need!!!!

                                      I used exactly the same config on the Protectli. I imported the config from there actually.
                                      Inline IPS mode, with all ETopen rules activated and I got full 980 download speed.

                                      Netgate 8200max

                                      bmeeksB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • bmeeksB
                                        bmeeks @manilx
                                        last edited by

                                        @manilx said in 6100 SLOW in comparison to Protectli FW6E:

                                        @bmeeks ANY questions you need!!!!

                                        I used exactly the same config on the Protectli. I imported the config from there actually.
                                        Inline IPS mode, with all ETopen rules activated and I got full 980 download speed.

                                        Thanks. I will continue looking into this. There are three of us still looking at this issue: me, a Suricata developer, and from time to time the OPNsense principal developer. Whatever fix is found will be incorporated into Suricata upstream, so you can follow the Suricata Redmine Issue if you would like. It might also turn out to be something that needs fixing in FreeBSD itself. This actually seems most likely to me as no Suricata users on Linux have reported anything similar.

                                        M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • bmeeksB
                                          bmeeks @manilx
                                          last edited by

                                          @manilx said in 6100 SLOW in comparison to Protectli FW6E:

                                          @bmeeks Perhaps netgate can provide you a 6100 for this. It's in their interest also as pfsense is only as good as the packages.....

                                          I have an SG-5100 which, if I recall, has the same NICs. But I am using that one for my production firewall at the moment so kind of in the same situation as you with regards to needing it up and running.

                                          I will soon have some other spare PC hardware, and perhaps I can grab an Intel NIC card for it that uses the ix and/or igc drivers.

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                                          • M
                                            manilx @bmeeks
                                            last edited by

                                            @bmeeks I actually started with OPNsense on Proxmox. Run fine for 9 months until https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=31338.0

                                            This is when I switched to pfsense.

                                            Netgate 8200max

                                            bmeeksB w0wW 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
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