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    Gigabit PPPoE and Intel Drivers

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    • D
      dopey
      last edited by

      I see very little difference with the net.isr.dispatch change. Ever since the spectre/meltdown bios update I'm barely cracking 650 with my c2758.

      Anyone know if denverton is more capable for pppoe or do I really need to go into core series CPU?

      I'm really looking for low tdp (preferably fanless) and ipmi and quad nic. I've found its nearly impossible to guarantee finding a non counterfeit Intel nic aftermarket without paying more than the CPU/motherboard for it :)

      w0wW 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • D
        dopey
        last edited by

        Looking at the benchmarks it doesn't look like denverton is any faster than avaton. More power efficient but that's it. So denverton likely won't fare much better.

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        • w0wW
          w0w @dopey
          last edited by w0w

          @dopey
          Did you restart firewall after change applied?
          Do you have the same result on your em card?

          w0wW 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • D
            dopey
            last edited by

            Oh duh!! I didn't switch back to the on igb NIC after making the change. I'll try that when I get a chance.

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            • w0wW
              w0w @w0w
              last edited by

              @w0w
              But at least it looks you have some performance drop on em card also after some changes? Is it spectre/meltdown patch?

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              • D
                dopey @w0w
                last edited by

                Yeah, the spectre/meltdown update coincided with a pretty big drop in performance with the em driver.

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                • D
                  dopey
                  last edited by dopey

                  Did a few more tests.
                  With em driver
                  net.isr.dispatch=deferred
                  700-800mbps

                  net.isr.dispatch=direct
                  675-715
                  most of the tests seem around 700 give or take a few

                  With igb
                  net.isr.dispatch=direct
                  500-600mbps

                  net.isr.dispatch=deferred
                  650-700

                  So net.isr.dispatch in both cases made a difference, but still shy of the 920 or so I should be pulling.

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by stephenw10

                    You can disable the Kernel PTI workaround for Meltdown in System > Advanced > Misc. You almost certainly don't need it anyway unless you are running virtual.

                    The IBRS workaround for Spectre may not be active anyway but you can disable that too with the loader tunable:
                    hw.ibrs_disable=1

                    https://wiki.freebsd.org/SpeculativeExecutionVulnerabilities

                    Steve

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                    • V
                      VAMike @stephenw10
                      last edited by VAMike

                      @stephenw10 said in Gigabit PPPoE and Intel Drivers:

                      You can disable the Kernel PTI workaround for Meltdown in System > Advanced > Misc. You almost certainly don't need it anyway unless you are running virtual.

                      That's not correct. You need to mitigate meltdown unless you are 100% confident that there is no need for privilege separation on a system. (E.g., if you have no reason to run a web service as something other than root, or run pre-auth ssh code as an unprivileged user, etc.) If you use privilege separation as a mitigation for other vulnerabilities (e.g., bug in web script, bug in ssh, etc.) then you need meltdown mitigation in order for the privilege separation to actually be meaningful. Other speculative execution bugs like L1TF-VMM (CVE-2018-3646) are specific to virtual machines.

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                      • D
                        dopey @VAMike
                        last edited by

                        @vamike that would only really apply if there's any ability to execute malicious code within the privilege separated processes right? If the router is locked down so only trusted individuals can to access it and there are no available vulnerablities (big IF I know) there's should be no way someone can take advantage of the vulnerablities.

                        I know there was some grumblings of a remote spectre like exposure but I don't know if that applies to routers.

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                        • V
                          VAMike @dopey
                          last edited by

                          @dopey said in Gigabit PPPoE and Intel Drivers:

                          @vamike that would only really apply if there's any ability to execute malicious code within the privilege separated processes right? If the router is locked down so only trusted individuals can to access it and there are no available vulnerablities (big IF I know) there's should be no way someone can take advantage of the vulnerablities.

                          Sure. Like any other mitigation, it's a risk based decision. OTOH, if you can be sure that you can lock things down and never have a vulnerability, why are you running a firewall at all?

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                          • stephenw10S
                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                            last edited by

                            Mmm, interesting. Some stuff I had not considered there.

                            Anyway you can test it and see if it improves performance by any useful amount. If not leave it enabled.

                            Steve

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                            • V
                              VAMike
                              last edited by

                              I'd expect the spectre mitigations to be more costly than meltdown, and arguably less relevant.

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                              • D
                                dopey @VAMike
                                last edited by

                                @vamike looking at the processes running on my router, unbound and dhcpd are the only two things not running as root. So given that it seems that avoiding meltdown/spectre on a native bare-metal install is fine. Anything that can take advantage of meltdown or spectre would likely simply take advantage of being root.

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                                • D
                                  dopey
                                  last edited by dopey

                                  Kernel PTI disabled and net.isr.dispatch=deferred

                                  https://www.speedtest.net/result/7815707411

                                  A little bit better than I was getting before the meltdown patch with dispatch=direct

                                  Not too shabby.

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                                  • D
                                    Doboy @w0w
                                    last edited by

                                    @w0w said in Gigabit PPPoE and Intel Drivers:

                                    There are some updates in FreeBSD bug report — https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=203856
                                    Can someone test this possible solution suggested?
                                    In terminal do

                                    sysctl net.isr.dispatch=deferred
                                    

                                    Try some gigabit tests, like dslreports or whatever. Check for your speeds and report it here, please.

                                    Thanks, that did it for me, allowing me to almost double my Rx on my realtek Nics on my Zotac box.. So glad, getting ~ 750/750 now.. which is good enough for now.

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                                    • D
                                      dopey @Doboy
                                      last edited by

                                      @doboy
                                      If you read back a few posts you'll see some of my experiences. I actually had to disable the meltdown fixes as well to get back to close to what I was getting before.

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                                      • T
                                        toni8
                                        last edited by

                                        This post is deleted!
                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                        • stephenw10S
                                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                          last edited by stephenw10

                                          50% CPU usage on that dual core CPU is probably 100% on one core if you;re checking on the dashboard.
                                          Suricata can use the other core bringing it up to 100% total. You would have to check at the command line to see the CPU usage breakdown: top -aSH.

                                          That is more that I would have thought but the single thread rating of the E4500 is significantly higher than, say, the J1900 that has been seen to be limited to ~500Mbps PPPoE. Though those Celerons seem particularly effected by this for some reason.

                                          Steve

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                                          • T
                                            thegriffin @stephenw10
                                            last edited by

                                            @stephenw10 said in Gigabit PPPoE and Intel Drivers:

                                            That is more that I would have thought but the single thread rating of the E4500 is significantly higher than, say, the J1900 that has been seen to be limited to ~500Mbps PPPoE. Though those Celerons seem particularly effected by this for some reason.

                                            Steve

                                            Hi Steve, does this problem also/still affect the newer Celerons?

                                            I have a 1000/100 FTTH link with PPPoE on it and I had almost settled on getting a Qotom Q515G6 with a Celeron 3865U and 6 x Intel I211-AT NICs as my first pfSense router, figuring it okay for my needs* but after finding this thread I'm wondering if the Celeron may choke on the PPPoE and I may need an i3?

                                            *Typical home usage, 1 Gbps routing over PPPoE, light VPN server needs, firewall, NAT, pfBlockerNG with DNSBL and in and out IP lists filtering, light Suricata usage mostly for learning purposes.

                                            P.S. congratulations for the great forum, I've been reading a lot of it in the last few days and it's been tremendously helpful.

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