Need to upgrade for gigabit (pppoe) connection
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The top 3 in here won't work, but the others will: https://store.netgate.com/pfSense/systems.aspx
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PPPoE, PPTP and FTP are those protocols in that pool of old shit that you just want to die and never come back. It's just no longer worth it to use them. Too bad ISP's are locked into their older gear and can't switch…
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PPPoE is single threaded
Is this planned to be multi threaded in the near future?
Unfortunately this requires a non-trivial rewrite of the FreeBSD PPPoE code as I understand it. It's unlikely to happen any time soon. :-\
Steve
Which device would you recommend from your store for Gigabit (Symmetrical) PPPoE? (+ few other packages)
(Even more future proof, if possible, Gigabit + ) -
I'd suggest you ask for a non-PPPoE connection, might be much simpler.
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Well, i wish i could ask that :)
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Following up on this -
I bought the https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/atom/A2SDi-4C-HLN4F.cfm board and loaded Proxmox on it. I did a fresh install of pfSense and then imported all my config files. I used the VirtIO network drivers for both the LAN and WAN adapters. I cranked up the speed test.
Aaaaand...... My speed was ~280/280. Worse than what it was on the old D525 Atom board (400ish/400ish).
After fooling around with my installed packages, I am surprised as to what was the biggest offender: BandwidthD. On removal of the BandwidthD package my speed jumped to around 800/800!
This is an issue noticed by a few other folks, but I never caught onto it.
Not too happy about this I re-deployed my old system to see if I got similar performance gains by removing BandwidthD (it's the same config, after all) - I was able to hit 570/540 on the D525 system after disabling BandwidthD- still slower than the new system so I did gain some speed with the new hardware (as well as a virtualization platform). Removing Suricata didn't have as much of a noticeable impact - maybe 10-15mb gain after a few more speed tests. pfBlockerNG removal had no impact - BandwidthD was the absolute killer in this situation. The CPU was holding at around 70% in the web GUI during the speed tests with all my add-in packages removed so I think I saw the maximum the D525 could push.
I'm not certain what the penalty (if any) on performance is for virtualization of pfsense, but this board will work well for anyone in a similar situation with high speed pppoe based internet and wanting a lower power draw (and smaller) system.
I also tested with a Sophos XG VM and was able to hit 930/930 so I'm hoping some additional tweaks in pfSense can get me to the same speeds. Once I have a good baseline of "maximum" I'll start adding packages and watching for performance hits.
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Thanks for following up on this. Its nice to see some actual numbers from some of these old platforms. I have a system with an Atom 2550 running pfsense 2.4.x. Given that the 2550 and the D525 are neck and neck in many benchmarks, it seems that's 500 Mbit or so is about what I can expect out of this box. Mind you, I am still on 40Mbit/5Mbit plan so this is strictly theoretical.
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If you have Intel NICs and you don't use PPPoE you might see slightly over 600Mbps with that. I recall another user reporting ~650Mbps with a similar box. That was many pfSense versions ago though.
Normal test caveats apply, packet size etc.Steve
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@stephenw10 Unfortunately, my box has Broadcom NICs and I am in a CenturyLink area (PPPoE land.) We do have a municipal fiber provider (Utopia) but it’s not available in my area yet. They can provide from 250 Mbit to 10 Gigabit symmetric. I am just waiting for them to make it down my street and take my money.
Carlos
