Latency

GruensFroeschli

30mbit both directions

i meant current bandwith not the maximum ;)
but a 600 mhz machine should be enough to handle 60 mbit.

are you using polling?

Nick7

Hi

ever since i've installed pfsense the latency to .. everywhere become alot worse (places that used to have 1-3 ms is now 20-30 ms in games and even worse for the web)

I must say I do not see a problem here.
1-3 ms if playing on Internet is impossible, as these latencies can be achieved only on LAN.
Also 20-30ms is extremely good connection, if playing on Internet.
Just to put things into perspective, standard LCD's have 60Hz refresh rate, which means screen is refreshed each 16.66ms.

ZGamer

@Nick7:

@revvy:

Hi

ever since i've installed pfsense the latency to .. everywhere become alot worse (places that used to have 1-3 ms is now 20-30 ms in games and even worse for the web)

I must say I do not see a problem here.
1-3 ms if playing on Internet is impossible, as these latencies can be achieved only on LAN.
Also 20-30ms is extremely good connection, if playing on Internet.
Just to put things into perspective, standard LCD's have 60Hz refresh rate, which means screen is refreshed each 16.66ms.

I've played on the internet with latency between 3 and 7 (fractional DS-3).

Do you have shaping enabled?

How many rules are you running?

Which game?

How many machines are behind the firewall?

Running BT/Limewire/ect while playing games?

Are both nics running in full-duplex mode?

Shanlar

I am also seeing this issue when my roommate and I play WoW. It is normally around 30ms but when we are behind pfSense it stays around 100ms at the minimum. We have static port enabled. Are there any firewall/nat rules we should setup? Currently I only have the default allow LAN -> any in my firewall.

hoba

Can you test with the trafficshaper enabled and with the trafficshaper disabled and check latency? Try to only have the game running so there is no other concurrent load on the link while testing.

Shanlar

Trafficshaper had no effect. The only activity I have going on my network is WoW. I have tried it with following settings:

NAT Reflection enabled and disable
enabled static port on the default entry it creates when I select to do Advanced Outbound NAT
static port with a manual entry of 3274 for source, interface WAN
static port with a manual entry of 3274 for destination, interface WAN
set firewall to agressive with 30k states

None of these settings seem to make any noticeable difference. My router is a PII 400 with 512MB RAM so there should be no bottle-neck there.

hoba

do you see errors on any interface whan checking status>interfaces? Maybe you have some link negotiation issue with the modem or a switch somewhere?

sullrich

Try editing /etc/sysctl.conf with Diagnostics -> Edit file.

Change:

net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=1
to
net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=0

Reboot, test again. Any change? If not, edit:

net.inet.tcp.sack.enable=1
to
net.inet.tcp.sack.enable=0

Reboot, test again. Any change?

cmb

@revvy:

ever since i've installed pfsense the latency to .. everywhere become alot worse (places that used to have 1-3 ms is now 20-30 ms in games and even worse for the web)

I think you're seeing something that just isn't happening. There's no way that's actually the case. It's impossible to have 1-3 ms latency across the Internet, your latency to your first hop is likely at least that much and possibly more. 20-30 ms across the Internet is very good.

The speed of light in fiber is about 30% less than the speed of light in a vacuum, or roughly 209,854,720 meters per second. That's ~130.4 miles per ms. Given that your average random remote Internet host is probably at least several hundred if not a thousand or more miles away, 1-3 ms is faster than the speed of light. Absolutely without question impossible to achieve without breaking the laws of physics.

Add varying routing latencies of around 0.2-1 ms per hop depending on router load, and probably 20-30 hops to most destinations, and it's even more impossible.

Might you be seeing some sort of issue causing increased latency? It's possible. But when you describe 20-30 ms latencies across the Internet, I really doubt it. pfSense generally adds about 0.2 ms latency to traffic passing through it on lower end hardware, which is better than many routers/firewalls and very acceptable. What you're describing sounds very normal, there's no possible way you ever saw 1-3 ms across the Internet.

Shanlar

@sullrich:

Try editing /etc/sysctl.conf with Diagnostics -> Edit file.

Change:

net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=1
to
net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=0

Reboot, test again. Any change? If not, edit:

net.inet.tcp.sack.enable=1
to
net.inet.tcp.sack.enable=0

Reboot, test again. Any change?

I don't have those entries in my sysctl.conf file. Should I manually add them into it?

sullrich

Yeah, try adding the entries with =1 for kicks.

cmb

I really don't think changing that will have any effect, since you don't seem to be seeing anything abnormal, but let us know.

Shanlar

Yea I tried putting them to 1 and then tried 0, no effect. Any other possible ideas?

cmb

Actually yeah of course that isn't going to affect anything. Looking back at exactly what was recommended (only briefly glanced through this earlier), that only affects traffic initiated by the firewall itself, it has no effect whatsoever on traffic traversing the firewall.

If you take the firewall out and connect directly to the Internet, you can verify that your latency really drops that much? I have my doubts, unless your hardware is undersized, that increased latency would be caused by pfSense.

What are the specs of your hardware, CPU, RAM, type of NICs, etc.?

Shanlar

It looks like it isnt pfSense. I did verify my latency drops that low when I am plugged directly into the DSL line. So I went digging through some boxes and found an old DLink router that I plugged in and loaded up WoW on both machines. Same issue happened. So it appears to be related to only when the game is loaded on 2 machines on the network. The odd part is we have no latency issues in any other games, only WoW.

Guess it is time to call up my DSL Provider and get them to check out my line. Thanks for the help, I appreciate it.

Bogdan

I had the same problems in the past yer , but i resolve with a new configuration system.
I change the network cards in to a gigabyte "intel" 1000 full duplex and the ram "512 ddr333 to 1024 ddr 400
I have better connection and lag then i play alone with single pc without any firewall

ex : ping 5-10 metro loss=0 choke=0 " ping 20-30 europe loss=1-3 choke=max5' ping 30-50 usa loss= 2-8
choke= max 20

ps: u have to change this