Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Web Browsing Performance affected adversely with a single PC uploading

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    28 Posts 12 Posters 5.4k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • johnpozJ
      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
      last edited by

      its not so much that the bandwidth requirements are too high.. But that you have a queue of packets..  If you fill up the queue/buffer, then have to wait in line.. This cause delay, dns is time sensitive..  Users are use to page instantly coming up when they put in http://instantgrat.com etc…

      I agree a dns query is small, also a http get also small..  But if you have 10,000 packets in front of your query -- takes time for that query to happen..  Term sometime used to describe this problem is buffer bloat..

      Filling up your upload pipe can kill performance..  Don't fill up your pipe is easy fix.. Do pfsense show your upload pipe full??  Looking at your traffic graph?

      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
      SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • D
        doktornotor Banned
        last edited by

        Not really sure what's up for disussion here…. When your uplink is saturated by the cloud shit, everyone will suffer from high latency. Get a better uplink or set up a limiter on the host. While you may consider this a "a fairly normal task", an idiot trying to upload tens/hundreds of gigs of data to cloud will kill your connectivity for days.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • C
          clarityit
          last edited by

          doktornotor, does your Cloud shit = a single PC using google drive is enough to affect every other user in a network but on a home connection (slower speed, no pfSense) the same problem doesn't show.

          Does anyone have a better idea for this problem and how to resolve?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • H
            heper
            last edited by

            there is no problem to solve.
            this is normal behavior.

            previous posts gave you answers to your question: limiters and/or qos

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • KOMK
              KOM
              last edited by

              does your Cloud shit = a single PC using google drive is enough to affect every other user in a network but on a home connection (slower speed, no pfSense) the same problem doesn't show.

              I don't know about that, but I know that my home connection (30 Mb down, 1 Mb up) turns to shit for everyone else when I'm syncing local data to my ownCloud.  No pfSense involved.  It's basic networking.  If you have a tiny uplink and you saturate it, then everything else will be slow.  Simply increasing your upstream bandwidth won't help as your cloud guy will still be pounding the link and continue to saturate it.  Traffic shaping is your only real option, and you can solve it by prioritizing DNS and ACK above HTTP/S.  You can ask more people if you don't like these answers, but nothing will change.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • D
                doktornotor Banned
                last edited by

                Owncloud is a complete disaster. And – so are most of similar "solutions". There's the Synology NAS stuff with their "local cloud" stuff. I have seen their supershity sync utility for Windows kill networks at a whim. Repeatedly.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • johnpozJ
                  johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                  last edited by

                  Users complain when cloud upload is slow, then they complain when it kills the pipe when it uses it all.. Can not win ;)

                  When companies do stuff in their sync software to try and make sure it doesn't fill the pipe users complain its slow, when they use the whole pipe they complain that their network is slow..  And then these companies continue to sell internet connections with 30/1 – that is a really bad ratio..  Could you even fill that download pipe before your upload is saturated with acks?

                  An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                  If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                  Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                  SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • KOMK
                    KOM
                    last edited by

                    Could you even fill that download pipe before your upload is saturated with acks?

                    I can reliably pump about 25 Mbps through it.  It was a 25/1 connection that I upgraded to 30/5, but my upload tests all seem to max out at 1 Mbps.  I'll have to get on my ISP about that when I have some time.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • johnpozJ
                      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                      last edited by

                      Well if your paying for 30/5 and seeing 25/1 yeah I would complain ;)

                      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                      SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • H
                        Harvy66
                        last edited by

                        This is an issue of buffer bloat. The simple solution is to enable CoDel or FairQ traffic shapers on your WAN interface. Just set them to a bandwidth slightly less than your actual bandwidth.

                        If you need more fine-grain control, then you'll need to delve into traffic shaping, which is a much more complicated answer to your question.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • KOMK
                          KOM
                          last edited by

                          yeah I would complain ;)

                          I already started the process and they came back with a huge list of steps to go through, including connecting my PC directly to the cable modem for the duration of the support ticket.  This is not possible in the real world as my kids, wife and MIL would kill me long before the ISP could fix the problem.  It's like I have to arrange for a maintenance window in the early or late hours in my own house  :-\

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • S
                            Stewart
                            last edited by

                            @KOM:

                            yeah I would complain ;)

                            I already started the process and they came back with a huge list of steps to go through, including connecting my PC directly to the cable modem for the duration of the support ticket.  This is not possible in the real world as my kids, wife and MIL would kill me long before the ISP could fix the problem.  It's like I have to arrange for a maintenance window in the early or late hours in my own house  :-\

                            In instances like that, I add a switch between the modem and the router so I don't have to take the router and its network offline.  Then, you can have your PC plugged in and configured however you like.  If your modem isn't set to pass through and has a DHCP server on it, then you just plug in and test.  You're still inside the LAN of the modem, just not inside the LAN of you router.  If you have a single static IP and its set to bridge mode it gets tricky since you can't have them both in simultaneously but if you have multiple statics it becomes a breeze again.  Good luck!

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • johnpozJ
                              johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                              last edited by

                              Or just tell them sure I did that - wtf do they know.. They are most likely level 1 just running through a script..  Have them reprovision your modem with the speeds your suppose to be getting..

                              An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                              If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                              Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                              SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • N
                                NOYB
                                last edited by

                                @KOM:

                                … they came back with a huge list of steps to go through, including connecting my PC directly to the cable modem for the duration of the support ticket.

                                Did they specify what the PC OS has to be?  If not, install pfSense on a PC and plug it.  If they ask, tell them you use FreeBSD.  If they require Windows tell them to show you that requirement in their ToS.  If they still insist, tell them to send you a Windows installation CD and product key.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • chpalmerC
                                  chpalmer
                                  last edited by

                                  Not a strange problem at all. In fact to be expected.

                                  http://cable-dsl.navasgroup.com/#Asymmetry

                                  Blast from the past.

                                  Triggering snowflakes one by one..
                                  Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590T CPU @ 2.00GHz on an M400 WG box.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • KOMK
                                    KOM
                                    last edited by

                                    Did they specify what the PC OS has to be?

                                    No but that wasn't relevant.  The issue was that they expected my PC to have exclusive access to the router for the duration of the ticket.  That means my whole family is offline for potentially days, and this is unacceptable.  That's why I haven't gone further in the troubleshooting process.

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • chpalmerC
                                      chpalmer
                                      last edited by

                                      @KOM:

                                      No but that wasn't relevant.  The issue was that they expected my PC to have exclusive access to the router for the duration of the ticket.  That means my whole family is offline for potentially days, and this is unacceptable.  That's why I haven't gone further in the troubleshooting process.

                                      If they are anything like my ISP they will look at the attached MAC address and assume from that what you have connected.  If your using a PC as your router hardware it just might fool them.

                                      Triggering snowflakes one by one..
                                      Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590T CPU @ 2.00GHz on an M400 WG box.

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • A
                                        aGeekhere
                                        last edited by

                                        The issue was that they expected my PC to have exclusive access to the router for the duration of the ticket.

                                        That is normally about 20 to 30 mins.

                                        That means my whole family is offline for potentially days, and this is unacceptable.

                                        DAYS!? What? It should not take days.

                                        You got to skip level 1 and talk to someone higher up.

                                        Never Fear, A Geek is Here!

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • KOMK
                                          KOM
                                          last edited by

                                          After tests are run on my end, I submit data and wait for a response.  That in itself can take hours.  Then some time to investigate the problem on their end etc etc and time slips away.  It's not like I've got any SLA guarantees to leverage.  I'll get to it eventually but it's not really a pressing concern for me at the moment.  We're getting the extra downstream bandwidth I paid for, and I couldn't really care about upstream.

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • E
                                            Evad
                                            last edited by

                                            I had a similar issue that occurred with either an upload or a download by one machine locking out other machines. This started when I installed pfSense ( 2.2.2)  in place of a Cisco ASA.

                                            DSL Supports first move was to have me remove pfSense and of course the problem was solved as far as they were concerned since the problem only existed with pfSense inline.

                                            After much research and packet sniffing I disabled Queue management or Q0S on the DSL router. (F@ST 1704N) That did the trick. It was on by default.  Every few months they reset me and I have to turn it off again and re-enter the virtual servers.

                                            What got my eye here is your reference to RRT time increasing. Was the same here.

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                            • First post
                                              Last post
                                            Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.