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    10GB link but only 1GB speeds

    Hardware
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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator @Elrick75
      last edited by

      @Elrick75 said in 10GB link but only 1GB speeds:

      I guess the file doesn't exist by default and I have to create it, right?

      Exactly.

      That looks good.

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      • E
        Elrick75 @stephenw10
        last edited by

        @stephenw10 Does it make sens to add also the information below too ?

        764a249a-9af5-4de0-ae76-085082b42fb3-image.png

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        • stephenw10S
          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
          last edited by

          No I wouldn't expect to need those.
          If you're hitting the rate limit issue it should be pretty obvious once you apply that first loader tunable.

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          • E
            Elrick75 @stephenw10
            last edited by

            @stephenw10

            It sounds really better... 1Gb to 3Gb but far as ~7,6Gb

            b122b42d-c98b-4c53-8a4e-7bdac74e2760-image.png

            Is there any other optimisation that i can do ?

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            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by

              How are you testing that exactly? That looks like single steam so one CPU core. What is running the iperf client?

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              • E
                Elrick75 @stephenw10
                last edited by Elrick75

                @stephenw10 Exactly the same like before.
                pfSense as client, a workstation as server.

                7089779d-a13e-45a7-8a8f-10c767662fe2-image.png

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                • stephenw10S
                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                  last edited by

                  Ok try testing between two interfaces not to/from pfSense directly. pfSense is a bad server!

                  E RobbieTTR 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • E
                    Elrick75 @stephenw10
                    last edited by Elrick75

                    @stephenw10 said in 10GB link but only 1GB speeds:

                    Ok try testing between two interfaces not to/from pfSense directly. pfSense is a bad server!

                    The reason I was doing the test was to get the best bandwidth with my ISP, which offers a 10Gb connection (~8Gb max in reality).
                    So I need to understand and improve the speed between pfsense and my local network if I'm going to be able to match the speed with my ISP... because with only 3Gb, I'm way off the mark.

                    What could be a problem with pfsense that I can still improve? Unless it's the card and its driver that aren't optimized to reach this target!

                    The change that we made is changing my bandwotch with my ISP too... i have 3Gb downstream rate.

                    96204a94-be6a-4039-86f7-a2b4f56085b5-image.png

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                    • stephenw10S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by

                      First check the per core CPU uage whilst testing either in Diag > System Activity or at the CLI using top -HaSP

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                      • E
                        Elrick75 @stephenw10
                        last edited by

                        @stephenw10

                        here's the result when I make a capture during the iperf test

                        e19ae392-923f-441f-9b91-7b841824a43c-image.png

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                        • stephenw10S
                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                          last edited by

                          Hmm, nothing filling a core there. But you can see iperf itself is the largest consumer.

                          What about at the other end?

                          What can you pass if you run multiple streams in iperf?

                          Or with multiple iperf instances?

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                          • RobbieTTR
                            RobbieTT @stephenw10
                            last edited by

                            @stephenw10 said in 10GB link but only 1GB speeds:

                            Ok try testing between two interfaces not to/from pfSense directly. pfSense is a bad server!

                            Hi Steve,

                            May I ask about this and why pfSense is a bad server?

                            I can understand hardware limitations that can limit a system and these are pretty common on low power CPUs on router / firewall devices but unsure why pfSense or BSD itself would provide a barrier.

                            I don't run anything above 10 GbE (ie SFP+ being the limiting factor) but I don't appear to have any issues with iPerf traffic beyond the physical interface limits, even when using the GUI version and with the link handling other concurrent traffic:

                             2023-11-01 at 11.30.58.png

                            The actual limits for production routing sit elsewhere (traffic mix, encryption, ACLs, firewall, states, VLANs or (in my case) PPPoE). Simple iPerf testing seems trivial, if both ends have the guts to process the packets.

                            ☕️

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                            • stephenw10S
                              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                              last edited by

                              That's on the Ice Lake Xeon box you have?

                              Mostly it's bad because a bunch of TCP tuning stuff that you would want on a server only hurts on a router where TCP connections are not terminated. The TCP hardware offloading options make quite a big difference.
                              For many devices the iperf process itself uses significant CPU cycles that could otherwise be routing packets. You often see much higher throughput values testing from a client behind it on low core count appliances.

                              Steve

                              RobbieTTR 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                              • RobbieTTR
                                RobbieTT @stephenw10
                                last edited by

                                @stephenw10 said in 10GB link but only 1GB speeds:

                                That's on the Ice Lake Xeon box you have?

                                It is the Ice Lake Xeon-D. Thanks for the explanation and the normal disabling of NIC offload functions didn't occur to me; but otherwise it is hardware issue rather than a pf/BSD limitation, if I understand you correctly?

                                Having come from MIPS routers I understand that running iPerf from a device, rather than through it, can be practically impossible!

                                ☕️

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • stephenw10S
                                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                  last edited by

                                  There are some other tunables in the network stack that are set for better routing at the expense of terminated connections. I've occasionally spent time tweaking them but the pfSense defaults are pretty good for most firewall type scenarios. If you are using pfSense as, say, a platform for HAProxy or a VPN concentrator there may be some improvement possible.

                                  RobbieTTR 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • RobbieTTR
                                    RobbieTT @stephenw10
                                    last edited by

                                    @stephenw10

                                    All interesting stuff. 👍

                                    ☕️

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