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    Netgate 6100 - High Mbuf usage

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Official Netgate® Hardware
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    • P
      ptchuba @stephenw10
      last edited by

      @stephenw10

      Uptime is 9days, i think i rebooted on the March 13th and probably on March 4th too. Thank you so much for taking a look!

      959ba610-7b8f-4211-bf37-6f3b6660f0cc-image.png

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      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        Hmm, not linear like a leak, just looks to be using a lot.

        How much traffic is the 6100 passing?

        What packages do you have installed?

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          ptchuba @stephenw10
          last edited by

          @stephenw10
          Little traffic
          a1b06420-3728-4230-9664-f51e06c005a0-image.png

          Here's my list of packages.
          a5ce997d-3563-4a7f-a123-e5671b7a2ef4-image.png

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          • stephenw10S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            Hmm, nothing vert unusual there. Throughput is relatively low.

            What NICs are you using?

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            • P
              ptchuba @stephenw10
              last edited by

              @stephenw10

              Not sure where to find this. It's the default ones that come with the 6100.

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              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                Ok, which interfaces are in use in your setup then?

                The defaults use IX for WAN and IGC for LAN so both NIC types. If you're using only one types that would be a clue. Or if you have added something for example.

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                • P
                  ptchuba @stephenw10
                  last edited by

                  @stephenw10
                  Oh I thought you meant if I'm using some different type of NIC hardware.

                  My setup is a little bit complicated. I changed the defaults because I needed more than 1gbps on the WAN so I took advantage of one of the 2.5 Gbps ports as WAN instead. I have several WAPs that are capable of 2.5Gbps so I put those on the rest of the LAN ports and grouped them into a Bridge. Finally, I have some other networks of a hardwired switch using VLANs so those are trunked into ix2. See below.

                  3a1e4926-aa61-438a-b2c8-7037d1de2e7a-image.png

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    Ok so you have a bridge interface which is relatively unusual. Which interfaces are in the bridge? Did you set any non-default value in the bridge config?

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                      ptchuba @stephenw10
                      last edited by

                      @stephenw10
                      Bridge interfaces are very common in most network equipment, not sure why you think it's unusual. The interfaces in the bridge are igc2,3,4. And no, there is no non-default-values in the bridge config.

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                      • stephenw10S
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator @ptchuba
                        last edited by stephenw10

                        @ptchuba said in Netgate 6100 - High Mbuf usage:

                        Bridge interfaces are very common in most network equipment

                        Not so much in pfSense though. Running interfaces in a bridge rather than using a switch has a number of drawbacks. The biggest of which is that the firewall has to pass all the traffic between clients in the same segment and it uses almost as many CPU cycles as routing.

                        Either way most pfSense installs including most 6100s do not have bridges configured so they are unusual in that respect. I'm not aware of mbuf leaks on any other 6100 so the first thing to check is some unusual config. To be clear bridged interfaces should work fine and I'm aware of any issue with them.

                        Are you able to test without the bridge to rule that out?

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                          ptchuba @stephenw10
                          last edited by

                          @stephenw10
                          Thank you so much for helping with this. While the network is designed to have the ability to switch traffic within the bridge, there is actually very little of that in practice. Most of the devices are just wifi clients heading to the internet. That said, I know there is broadcast traffic and other multicast and discovery traffic that would flow automatically within the bridge but other than that there is just limited use of intra-bridge traffic for things like IoT controller-devices communications.

                          The network is in production and I would prefer not to have to remove the bridge unless it's my last option.

                          Thanks again for helping.

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