Mixing different NIC Speeds (1Gb & 10Gb) Performance Problem Question
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So I forgot you solved this issue once for me when I had a Cisco 3650.
Seems like the Brocade ICX-7250 has the same issue but I find its CLI way more confusing and not as well documented as Cisco.
The Cisco fix was:
qos queue-softmax-multiplier 1200Brocade does not seem to have an equivalent that I can find, thus far I have tried.
Enabling Flow Control on all the Brocade Ports - Result no difference
Enabling "buffer-sharing-full" - Result no difference
Perhaps Brocades QOS "ingress-buffer-profile" or "egress-buffer-profile" would do the trick but the documentation and google searching is not leading me anywhere with something I can try.
If I cant get this working I may seriously consider getting a Cisco 3850, however I would like to get something that has 8Mb+ port buffers so I don't have to play this tuning game.
My ICX 7250 Config:
SSH@romulus>show run
Current configuration:
!
ver 08.0.95pT213
!
stack unit 1
module 1 icx7250-48-port-management-module
module 2 icx7250-sfp-plus-8port-80g-module
stack-port 1/2/1
stack-port 1/2/3
!
vlan 1 name DEFAULT-VLAN by port
router-interface ve 1
!
!
symmetrical-flow-control enable
!
!
optical-monitor
optical-monitor non-ruckus-optic-enable
aaa authentication web-server default local
aaa authentication login default local
enable aaa console
hostname romulus
ip dhcp-client disable
ip dns server-address 10.0.0.1
ip route 0.0.0.0/0 10.0.0.1
!
no telnet server!
clock timezone us Eastern
!
!
ntp
disable serve
server time.cloudflare.com
!
!
no web-management http
!
manager disable
!
!
manager port-list 987
!!
interface ethernet 1/1/4
flow-control neg-on
!
interface ethernet 1/1/48
flow-control neg-on
!
interface ethernet 1/2/1
flow-control neg-on
!
interface ethernet 1/2/8
flow-control neg-on
!
interface ve 1
ip address 10.0.0.3 255.255.255.0
!
!
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I would also try specifically disabling flow-control on all interfaces in the path. We have seen cases where flow-control itself was the problem. I really wouldn't expect flow-control to be an issue here when there are 1G links both up and down stream limiting the flow already.
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Last time I tried it made no difference but I'll try again. To me its clearly a Brocade issue, much like the Cisco issue I had but was able to fix with your help, I just cant find a comparable setting.
I should have just bought a Cisco 3850 with the 12x multigig ports. I am seeing them on ebay for $99. At that price I may just buy one and give up on the brocade.
With the 3850 I could have my WAN, LAN, and Win 11 clients all at 2.5Gb with a few remaining Win 11 clients at 1Gb. With the larger buffer and known QOS tweaks it would likely go a lot smoother for me.
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@ngr2001 Ok so we are sure we are on the same page..
In this config where its 1ge from your switch to pfsense, a single client is able to get 900ish Mbps..
But in this config.. Where pfsense has 10ge to your switch.. A single client is only able to get 600Mbps?
Is there any way you can test this config?
Where the client has a connection that can do your wan 2Ge isp connection? ie 2.5 or 5 or 10 directly connected to just a single client?
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@ngr2001 said in Mixing different NIC Speeds (1Gb & 10Gb) Performance Problem Question:
Last time I tried it made no difference but I'll try again. To me its clearly a Brocade issue, much like the Cisco issue I had but was able to fix with your help, I just cant find a comparable setting.
I should have just bought a Cisco 3850 with the 12x multigig ports. I am seeing them on ebay for $99. At that price I may just buy one and give up on the brocade.
With the 3850 I could have my WAN, LAN, and Win 11 clients all at 2.5Gb with a few remaining Win 11 clients at 1Gb. With the larger buffer and known QOS tweaks it would likely go a lot smoother for me.
It just borderline insane how cheap Cisco switches are used in the US..... You really must have a lot of shops that just rotates all the equipment on a schedule instead of actually looking at the value and lifetime the products offer.
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@keyser said in Mixing different NIC Speeds (1Gb & 10Gb) Performance Problem Question:
With the 3850
hahah - yeah you would also have what sounds like a jet taking off where ever you put it ;)
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In this setup all clients perform great, 900+Mbps sustained speedtests, no issues.
In this setup those 1Gb clients have issues, speedtest starts off strong and quickly drops to 500-600Mbps.
In this test both PFSense LAN NIC and the Client is at 10Gb, is this scenario the clients performance is also perfect, hitting 1.9Gbps sustained speedtest scores. The WAN is at 2.5Gb.
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@ngr2001then yeah that sure seems like its switch related to me.
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So do you see dropped packets in the switch? On which ports?
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Oddly, on the new Brocade switch I am not seeing any dropped packets, even when the performance drops.
If you recall, the Cisco 3650 would record dropped packets like crazy until we modified the config.
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Are you running the L2 or L3 firmware? L2 doesn't appear to offer the qos values but I'm not sure if that implies it doesn't use it.....
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If you haven't already you might as well try bumping the ip-qos-session value.
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On the Brocade ICX 7250 I have the Full Layer 3 Firmware / License.
Just the pure lack of community support and viable example documentation for the Brocade has me about to click buy-it now on a Cisco WS-C3850-12X48U-S.
Since I messed up once already, can anyone think of a better multigig switch than the WS-C3850-12X48U-S, by better I mean larger buffers to handle 10Gb traffic and mixed client speeds.
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I must say I find it almost impossible to believe that the 7250 can't handle this. I have an older 6450 here and have never seen problems like that with it. I have a 7250 also I just haven't found time to install it. Yet.
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I agree, I 100% feel its fixable, there is just not much info or example configs floating around to go off of.
Even their VLAN setup feels confusing compared to Cisco.
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Ha, well you have to hand it to Cisco, they have successfully convinced the world that their UI is the only and best UI. Including the Cisco terms for things that already had perfectly good names.
But a 10G trunk link between a router and switch with 1G downstream devices is pretty common setup. I'd expect to see numerous threads complaining about this yet....
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I wonder though, how many people go the length to properly test or verify their performance, even in my case I think the average person may have missed it.
I found this useful chart that attempts to document various switches and their buffer sizes, could come in handy for someone.
https://people.ucsc.edu/~warner/buffer.htmlI noted that the ICX7250 is only 2MB and the Cisco 3650 and 3850 are 6MB. I got the brocade only to get additional 10Gb ports but with the numbers showing it has 1/3 the buffer size, its probably no wonder the issues I am seeing,. Granted, may be fixable with some type of QOS or buffer tuning but there is not a whole lot of memory to go around.
https://people.ucsc.edu/~warner/buffer.html
The issue with my old 3650 was that it only had 2x 10Gb ports, with the 3850 having 12x I am thinking this may be my best path forward.
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Mmm, just no real idea of how much buffer space might be needed...
I'll try and get mine setup for a test.
Do you still see it in a local test or only to the remote speedtest server?
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Just on remote speed test thus far
Try fast.com and speedtest.net
as dumb as fast.com is, its seems to highlight the issue immediately.
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Mmm, I hit that exact symptom recently and it turned out to be an MTU/MSS issue. The test at fast.com takes ages to start doing anything, then gives some crappy download figure and errors out on the upload.
Try setting an MSS value on the interface in pfSense as a test. I'd just use, say, 1460 to be sure.
