PFSense on older hardware

N8LBV

This is me testing PFSense on an older 2006-2009 dual core Intel Laptop CPU.
CPU does not have AES-NI.
One test is OpenVPN throughput - (site to site VPN).
The other is the same site to site connection VIA dual NAT.
Upstream HTTP speedtest server connected upstream at 1Gbps.
I am doing similar testing with older/slower CPUs that feature AES-NI.

I am extremely happy that AES-NI did not become a hard requirement in PFSense.
Performance without it is sufficient for many use cases.
And performance (with it) is not significantly greater in my simple tests so far on similar
aged/powered hardware for OpenVPN.

Pretty much perfect for small networks/offices and 100mbps and slower Internet connections.

I actually would liked to have seen 32bit CPU support stick around longer than it has.
But the world is changing fast and I guess it's hard to maintain that and fewer & fewer people using it.

jimp

Which CPU specifically? If you look in dmesg what do the lines for the CPU and its features say?

Granted that is a pretty old CPU given the age, but if it supports SIMD features like SSE there is a chance that the new IIMB acceleration in Plus 23.05 might squeeze a tad more performance out of it.

stephenw10

What CPU is that?

Yes, it becomes impossible to justify the cost of maintaining the code base for an architecture once fewer and fewer people are using it. And other hardware is readily available.

Steve

N8LBV

@jimp

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T6400 @ 2.00GHz (1995.34-MHz K8-class CPU)
Origin="GenuineIntel" Id=0x1067a Family=0x6 Model=0x17 Stepping=10
Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
Features2=0xc08e39d<SSE3,DTES64,MON,DS_CPL,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,SSE4.1,XSAVE,OSXSAVE>

N8LBV

@stephenw10 CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T6400 @ 2.00GHz (1995.34-MHz K8-class CPU)
Origin="GenuineIntel" Id=0x1067a Family=0x6 Model=0x17 Stepping=10
Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
Features2=0xc08e39d<SSE3,DTES64,MON,DS_CPL,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,SSE4.1,XSAVE,OSXSAVE>

stephenw10

Ah, that seems about right then. I'd expect that CPU to be close to max when passing 1Gbps.

N8LBV

Here's a shot of that:
@stephenw10

stephenw10

Not even close. Pretty good.

jimp

OpenVPN would get a bump from IIMB in Plus 23.05 (if you can use DCO), as would IPsec and WireGuard. But on a CPU that old it's difficult to speculate about how much faster it might be.