Need ability to support 50mbit throughput with VPN

kapara

I have 9 locations deployed with Alix 2D13's

Each location has a 100/50 Mbit connection.

The main office is where all the VPN tunnels terminate to connect to the fileserver.

I do not seem to be able to push more than 6-7 mbit via ipsec. When I test with iperf from 2 locations the speed gets cut in half.

Would I see better performance if the corporate location used a Dell Xeon server? Would adding a card to handle encryption at the primary location help?

Been doing some research on AESNI and it looks like even using a corei5 proc can provide significant improvement. Anyone test AESNI on pfsense yet?

sipple31

So are you currently using an Alix as the head unit as well? I could certainly see that being a choke point. Would definitely need something with more horsepower.

corradolab

To get 100 Mbps IPSEC or above you have to use desktop/server cpu like Intel Core i3 or above.

Regards,
Corrado

jasonlitka

@kapara:

Been doing some research on AESNI and it looks like even using a corei5 proc can provide significant improvement. Anyone test AESNI on pfsense yet?

Yes, don't bother. AES-NI makes no difference at this point, though I wouldn't buy a CPU without it as better support is in the pipeline.