USB WAN interface only getting 100Mbps
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Hi all,
First time poster, and I've been looking around similar questions on the board and can't quite find the answer…
I'm using an Anker USB 3.0 Gigabit ethernet adaptor with pfsense and all has been working fine for the past year or so. Today I updated to Virgin fibre (UK) and when plugging my laptop directly in to router/modem I get 380Mbps.
When using my USB adaptor with pfsense I get only 90Mbps.
The machine I run pfsense from is an old(ish) Thinkpad laptop so I'm pretty certain the USB interfaces are only 2.0, but that still says to me that throughput should be nearer 400Mbps than 90-100Mbps.
Another oddity (though maybe it's normal??) is that the interface does not have speed or duplex information for that interface. Both the pfsense web interface and console show no 'media' information at all so part of me is wondering if this is more of a FreeBSD drivers issue (as apposed to USB 2).
Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks!
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chipset?
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This is the USB adaptor https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anker-Gigabit-Ethernet-Adapter-Supporting-Black-USB-3-0/dp/B00NPJP33M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505484308&sr=8-1&keywords=anker+usb+ethernet
The laptop is a lenovo thinkpad 7459-m78….
https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/solutions/pd013529
Which, according to this site, has a Intel Mobile GM45 Express chipset https://www.cnet.com/products/lenovo-thinkpad-x200-7459-12-1-core-2-duo-p8600-vista-business-2-gb-ram-160-gb-hdd-series/
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But what chipset does that USB adapter have? USB Ethernet is known to be very bad/unreliable/slow, so I'm not surprised you're having issues. Depending on the chipset there might be better alternatives, but if it's already a AX type there might not be much we can do.
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All indications are a Realtek RTL8153 chipset.
I've tried the USB adapter in a laptop connected directly to the fibre modem and, while it's not full speed, it's considerably faster:
- Dell Laptop (Windows 10) with built in ethernet: 380Mbps
- Dell Laptop (Windows 10) with USB ethernet: 220Mbps
- Lenovo Laptop (pfsense) with USB ethernet: 90Mbps
This is clearly a driver issue.
I'll have to either abandon pfsense or try and virtualise it and stick it on my HP server.
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I guess you'll have to abandon pfSense. The Realtek makes no useful drivers for FreeBSD, and USB Ethernet is highly inadvisable for pfSense. The reason it probably has higher speeds in Windows is that Realtek makes more/newer/better drivers for it, and has firmware and packet offloading. They don't make that for pfSense. Since you mentioned it doesn't report device flags correctly and is limited to 100Mbit, it might very well be that it's working in 'fallback' mode where it only does basic fast ethernet and nothing else.
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Or use VLANs with whatever interface is built into the laptop.
Steve
