WiFi is slower with pfsense vs Untangle. Any thoughts?
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Yeah I will say that smb is a good indicator of latency!
smb v3 less so but still... -
Hmm, interesting. Is that wifi connected?
Playstation is wired. By lower latency, I mean I get 30 ms ping when playing using pfSense compared to ~35 ms when in Untangle. I also noticed that when I do the network test, NAT Type 2 gets recognized quicker in pfSense than in Untangle.
I'm sorry if we're veering off topic. I view these things as related as everything is the same except the OS of the router appliance. It may be possible that I have not been using the optimized setting for my particular box. I will try pfSense again this weekend and post my settings here.
Thanks again!
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I'm using 4-port Intel I225-V(3) in a Qotom N5105 device with 128 GB M.2 NVME and 8 GB RAM.
And on that hardware, you where installing both OS?
I mean Untangle and pfSense, were both installed
bare metal on that hardware? Sorry for the
question but this was clear to me.DonĀ“t get me wrong here at this point, but if
untangle is based on Linux it is more near codec to the
hardware and so it runs a bit more liquid and smooth,
not even but often then BSD based systems. It is nothing
wrong with BSD based systems, they are offering often more hints and "tune ables" then given by Linux, but
BSD based systems need a bit more let us call it horse power from the point of view from the hardware.So I would not really surprised if you are trying out OpenWRT against pfSense and Untangle it present
once more other numbers to you. -
Hi! Iām using it bare metal, no virtualization. I wish I knew what the tune-ables are so that I can get the same performance as Iām getting from Untangle. I also wish someone else would test it just to make sure Iām not crazy.
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@bokolobs said in WiFi is slower with pfsense vs Untangle. Any thoughts?:
Hi! Iām using it bare metal, no virtualization.
Oh that was not clear to me.
I wish I knew what the tune-ables are so that
This was only an example
I can get the same performance as Iām getting from Untangle.
If may have a stronger hardware I would say you see the
and reach the same numbers as with pfSensen too.I also wish someone else would test it just to make
sure Iām not crazy.You arenĀ“t and if you give let us say OpenWRT an chance you may be see better numbers or the same as with any
other Linux based platform, it is not new and it is also often not recognized by users that BSD based system
are also near to the hardware acting and mostly
offering more capabilities, but on the other side BSD
needs some more horse power from the hardware. -
@bokolobs said in WiFi is slower with pfsense vs Untangle. Any thoughts?:
Yes, there is an Omada PoE switch between the router and the AP. I tested the wired connection to the iMac two ways: directly connected to the router (router as server: ~2.35Gbps -R: ~2.20Gpbs); connected to the Omada switch (940/920 Mbps).
Maybe I'm missing it but somewhere in this thread did you test:
iMac - switch - AP - wireless client
? Then the router is not involved. I realize it's probably a pain to be reinstalling pfSense/Untangle all the time, unless you have a spare drive. Which at today's speeds might not be faster to swap. (ya know, there was at least some benefit to running m0n0wall off a CD...)
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@steveits
Hi.iMac - switch - AP - wireless client
Nope, I didn't do this. I tested using iperf package in pfsense
router -> iMac (2.35/2.20 Gbps)
router -> switch -> iMac (940/920 Mbps)
router -> switch -> AP -> wireless client (~600/~500 Mbps)I can't compare directly with Untangle. I don't know how to setup an iperf server in Untangle.
Thanks again.
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@bokolobs while you are using iperf in pfsense your results are meaningless
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@patch Oh? Why is that?
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@bokolobs That hasn't been said in this thread yet.
(can somebody cut and paste that one here please ? )Let me pick one reason : because the apps you use don't run on pfSense, they are on some device connected on a LAN port.
The traffic speed that you want to know is the traffic that flows through pfSense, not emitted from, or received by pfSense as an endpoint.You can, of course, run speedtest on pfSense.
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@bokolobs said in WiFi is slower with pfsense vs Untangle. Any thoughts?:
Oh? Why is that?
Two reasons.
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pfsense is not optimised to work that way. It is optimised for throughput.
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Iperf is an extra application running on the router, reducing resources available for pfsense
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Running iperf on pfSense directly is not meaningless it just has to be used with the understanding that the absolute value is never going to be as high as a dedicated server would reach.
But for this sort of test where you are looking only to validate the link or for relative results I'd argue it's fine.It's pretty clear that the available bandwidth when connecting across wifi is less than a wired connection. And that at least 1G 'wire speed' is available at the switch.
A better question here might be how are you testing this using Untangle if it isn't to iperf running on Untangle?
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I had guessed it was comparing āthrough untangledā vs āto pfsenseā but it was just a guess.
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@patch @Gertjan @stephenw10
Thanks, everyone. I think I get it. At least I was able to confirm that my router and switch can deliver what the speed they're supposed to deliver, sans pfsense overhead.I found a spare m.2 drive and will install pfsense this weekend and just swap drives if I can't get the performance I want.
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@bokolobs
'Normally'
the drive used doesn't determine the throughput of a router.
A drive is used to boot from, to get the OS online. All hardware drivers etc will be in memory, and afterwards the disk drive might be used to log some lines ones in a while.If you want to use pfSense packages like bandwidthd / ntopng / pfBlockerNG / suricata / etc, a fast(er) storage medium becomes important.
A device like this already does half a Gbit/sec - and AFAIK, there is no speed demon disk in such a device
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@gertjan
Thanks! I meant swapping it with the drive with the Untangle installation if I canāt configure the pfSense installation to my liking. As suggested by @stephenw10, this might be easier than reinstalling and restoring from backup while Iām still doing all these tests and optimization.
