CPU Usage thread
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Hi there, I would like assistance with identifying the average CPU usage of pfSense across platforms.
I have pfSense 2.0 installed in an ESXi VM, with one physical NIC for my WAN, and the other physical NIC is connected to the vSwitch to my LAN.
Issue is, I am seeing high CPU usage, and I don't know if this is normal, as I am a new pfSense user.
On a 16Mbit download, I am seeing around 800Mhz CPU usage of a Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz. This seems high as my old 400Mhz router running DD-WRT handled the same speed downloads at around 80% load. There are 5 connections open to a usenet server, this isnt hundreds of connections like a torrent.
Can others please post their CPU usage by bandwidth? I would like to get an idea of what to expect from different CPU architectures. Also, is virtualization being used?
Thanks
Here is the system activity output
last pid: 5242; load averages: 0.02, 0.02, 0.00 up 1+07:02:39 18:30:50 90 processes: 2 running, 72 sleeping, 16 waiting Mem: 42M Active, 14M Inact, 40M Wired, 1032K Cache, 23M Buf, 134M Free Swap: 256M Total, 256M Free PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU COMMAND 11 root 171 ki31 0K 8K RUN 30.7H 92.97% idle 12 root -68 - 0K 128K WAIT 7:13 10.99% {irq18: em0 rl0} 0 root -68 0 0K 56K - 1:08 1.95% {em0 taskq} 0 root 47 0 0K 56K sched 909:15 0.00% {swapper} 12 root -32 - 0K 128K WAIT 3:34 0.00% {swi4: clock} 48254 root 64 20 3316K 1356K select 0:36 0.00% apinger 54994 root 76 20 3656K 1492K wait 0:19 0.00% sh 14 root -16 - 0K 8K - 0:16 0.00% yarrow 40014 dhcpd 44 0 8436K 5168K select 0:06 0.00% dhcpd 23 root 44 - 0K 8K syncer 0:04 0.00% syncer 29427 root 44 0 6588K 3524K kqread 0:04 0.00% lighttpd 2 root -8 - 0K 8K - 0:04 0.00% g_event 23883 root 44 0 7688K 3592K bpf 0:03 0.00% bandwidthd 23300 root 44 0 7688K 3592K bpf 0:03 0.00% bandwidthd 4 root -8 - 0K 8K - 0:02 0.00% g_down 18408 root 44 0 5912K 2456K bpf 0:02 0.00% tcpdump 44463 nobody 44 0 5556K 2588K select 0:02 0.00% dnsmasq 25837 root 44 0 7688K 3832K bpf 0:02 0.00% bandwidthd
Attached is a pic of CPU usage
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Core 2 Duo @3.06 GHz w/ 4GB.
ESXi 5.0 Free (Build 469512).
1 Intel 82567LM-3 on M/B
2 Intel 82572EI-based cards
1 Intel 82541PI-based card.
pfSense 2.0 + OpenVM tools and pfBlockerEDIT: I had a strange issue today with a Windows VM that had failed to load a USB driver. The vSphere client showed it as maxing out a 3.0 GHz processor but Task Manager showed it as using 2% CPU. (Yeah, I know, some of my VMs don't work too hard!)
![pfSense Util.jpg](/public/imported_attachments/1/pfSense Util.jpg)
![pfSense Util.jpg_thumb](/public/imported_attachments/1/pfSense Util.jpg_thumb) -
I'm running on real hardware so I would expect to have slightly better figures than you as there's no overhead.
It's hard to get an acurate figure as both cpu usage and throughput are constantly changing. However I would say that I am seeing aroung 12-16% cpu use with a 16-18Mbps download. I'm running a 1.2GHz P4-M so that would equate to something like 150MHz for a 16Mbps throughput.
In reality that figure is very hard to compare in a meaningful way. Modern CPUs can do a lot more per MHz.Steve
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biggsy can you tell me the CPU usage of your pfsense VM when downloading a file, and also provide the download rate?
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Here you go. Started out fairly quick (maybe 2 MB/s) but slowed right down to about 800 KB/s.
Biggsy
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Ok so you saw about 700Mhz CPU usage at 2MB/s (16Mbps) too on the same architecture (Core 2) and VMWare.
Perhaps VMWare just has a large overhead.
Anyone running pfSense natively that can chime in on CPU use?
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Dual WAN on a Celeron 700 with 256MiB RAM. I ran a few speedtests with both WANs (30Mbs+15Mbs), then just 30Mbs, and finally 15Mbs. First peak (~100%) is @ 45Mbs, next 3 (~40%) is single WAN @ 30Mbs, next 100% peak is the pfsense control panel rendering ;) final peaks at 20-30% cpu is with 15Mbs WAN only.