pfSense halving Virgin fibre connection speed

danneh82

I'm hoping someone with more pfSense expericence can help me with an issue im facing.

I've got a Dell R210ii running pfSense 2.4.4-RELEASE-p3. Ive been using this with my plusnet Fibre connection with no issues for the past few years.

I've just had 100mb virgin fibre installed. When testing the superhub 3 in router i get 110mb on speedtest.net. When i put it into modem mode and connecting through pfSense my speed drops to ~55mb.

I've never had any problems with pfsense before so need some help with diagnosing the issue. Ive looked at the gateway log and can see some packet loss.

WAN Interface (wan, bge0)
Status
up
DHCP
up     Relinquish Lease
MAC Address
00:0a:f7:44:5c:bc
IPv4 Address
##.##.##.##
Subnet mask IPv4
255.255.240.0
Gateway IPv4
##.##.##.##
IPv6 Link Local
fe80::2ad2:44ff:fe4e:4e18%bge0
DNS servers
127.0.0.1
192.168.0.235
MTU
1500
Media
100baseTX <full-duplex>
In/out packets
15284664/7300870 (19.39 GiB/971.09 MiB)
In/out packets (pass)
15284664/7300870 (19.39 GiB/971.09 MiB)
In/out packets (block)
100593/107 (3.20 MiB/19 KiB)
In/out errors
325747/0

Nov 16 16:49:56    dpinger        send_interval 500ms loss_interval 2000ms time_period 60000ms report_interval 0ms data_len 0 alert_interval 1000ms latency_alarm 500ms loss_alarm 20% dest_addr ##.##.##.## bind_addr ##.##.##.## identifier "WAN_DHCP "
Nov 16 16:50:00    dpinger        send_interval 500ms loss_interval 2000ms time_period 60000ms report_interval 0ms data_len 0 alert_interval 1000ms latency_alarm 500ms loss_alarm 20% dest_addr ##.##.##.## bind_addr ##.##.##.## identifier "WAN_DHCP "
Nov 16 16:50:52    dpinger        WAN_DHCP ##.##.##.##: Alarm latency 9457us stddev 4338us loss 21%
Nov 16 16:51:51    dpinger        WAN_DHCP ##.##.##.##: Clear latency 11589us stddev 8548us loss 9%
Nov 16 17:22:37    dpinger        send_interval 500ms loss_interval 2000ms time_period 60000ms report_interval 0ms data_len 0 alert_interval 1000ms latency_alarm 500ms loss_alarm 20% dest_addr ##.##.##.## bind_addr ##.##.##.## identifier "WAN_DHCP "
Nov 16 17:22:41    dpinger        send_interval 500ms loss_interval 2000ms time_period 60000ms report_interval 0ms data_len 0 alert_interval 1000ms latency_alarm 500ms loss_alarm 20% dest_addr ##.##.##.## bind_addr ##.##.##.## identifier "WAN_DHCP "
Nov 16 17:23:12    dpinger        WAN_DHCP ##.##.##.##: Alarm latency 9723us stddev 4958us loss 21%
Nov 16 17:23:42    dpinger        WAN_DHCP ##.##.##.##: Clear latency 22160us stddev 19379us loss 17%

JKnott

I doubt it's pfSense, as I get over 90 Mb on a 75 Mb plan and others obtain much more. However, I see this in your output 100baseTX <full-duplex>. You'll never get 110 Mb with that. It appears either you've configured the interface to be 100 Mb or you have a hardware problem, perhaps a bad cable. I also see a lot of in errors. That also indicates a hardware or cable issue.

stephenw10

First off connect a client directly to the Virgin router when it's in modem mode and make sure you get full speed there.

What do you have running in pfSense? Packages? Traffic shaping?

Steve

danneh82

@JKnott said in pfSense halving Virgin fibre connection speed:

I doubt it's pfSense, as I get over 90 Mb on a 75 Mb plan and others obtain much more. However, I see this in your output 100baseTX <full-duplex>. You'll never get 110 Mb with that. It appears either you've configured the interface to be 100 Mb or you have a hardware problem, perhaps a bad cable. I also see a lot of in errors. That also indicates a hardware or cable issue.

The only way I’ve been able to get any connection is to manually select 100baseTX - if I leave it as auto or set at 1000baseTX I get no connectivity to the super hub. I get the same behaviour using on board nic and quad port intel nic.

danneh82

@stephenw10 said in pfSense halving Virgin fibre connection speed:

First off connect a client directly to the Virgin router when it's in modem mode and make sure you get full speed there.

What do you have running in pfSense? Packages? Traffic shaping?

Steve

When I connect my pc up to the virgin hub I get full speed, tried spoofing the mac and connection still drops to ~50mb.

Pfsense is vanilla with no traffic shaping setup

JKnott

@danneh82 said in pfSense halving Virgin fibre connection speed:

The only way I’ve been able to get any connection is to manually select 100baseTX

If you set one end to a fixed speed, then you should also set the other end the same way. Otherwise, you could have problems. Also, I see you have 325747 input errors. What happens if you connect a computer directly to the modem?

stephenw10

Ooops, yeah totally missed that. No way you will get full speed with fixed speed/duplex like that. The other side is clearly not set to that with those input errors.

Try a different NIC for WAN if it won't negotiate 1G on the current one.

Steve

JKnott

@stephenw10 said in pfSense halving Virgin fibre connection speed:

Try a different NIC for WAN if it won't negotiate 1G on the current one.

It might also be a defective cable. If all 4 pairs aren't working properly, it won't connect at 1 Gb and may also cause errors.

danneh82

So after wasting the best part of a day troubleshooting i missed one of the first basic tests - the hub is in my office and the pfsense router is up in a rack in the loft. I had swapped both patch leads at either end but not tested the structured cabling. Swapped data ports (luckily ran extra drops!) and now getting full speed.

Thanks to all who replied!

JKnott

@danneh82 said in pfSense halving Virgin fibre connection speed:

Swapped data ports (luckily ran extra drops!) and now getting full speed.

The problem is probably at one of the connectors. Reterminating the cable should fix that or perhaps there's a bad connector. The cable itself rarely goes bad, unless physically damaged.