Download speed varies by OS after setting up pfSense router with 2.4.5.

johnpoz

yeah your scaling is disable, and your auto-tuning is off..

Do this..

From an elevated cmd prompt, run cmd as admin type

netsh interface tcp set global rss=enabled

and then
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=enabled

Then show your globals again
netsh interface tcp show global

you should see
Receive-Side Scaling State : enabled
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level : normal

Then do your speed tests again

edit: don't worry about being able to put it back, its simple as same command with disabled, etc. And we have post of what your settings were already ;)

I would show you the difference on mine - but I have 5 people streaming off my plex currently, and that is taxing my connection already ;)

NonagonInf

@johnpoz Yep! That did it! Just so I understand better for the future, is this something related to the innate configuration of pfSense and some of my devices are just already configured to work that way and the Windows devices are not by default?

johnpoz

no not anything to do with pfsense - its windows thing, autotuning should be on by default with scaling - not sure why yours was disabled...

Had you run any sort of "tweaking" software or anything? I will have to do a bit of research - but I am pretty sure that is suppose to be on by default.

NonagonInf

@johnpoz Huh, okay, I must have just uncovered that during all the testing and stuff. I really appreciate the help!

johnpoz

I know I just went over this somewhere in the last few weeks at most -- killing me that cant find where that was, might of been reddit or other forums I frequent ;)

Glad you got it sorted... You might want to turn on ECN as well.

johnpoz

Was this windows 10 an upgrade from say 7? Or clean install?

Either way, when you find that your not getting what you expect for full speed, could to check that is enabled.. Here is some info about scaling..

NonagonInf

Clean install. The weird thing is that it is that way on multiple machines, but I suppose that might just be a fluke.

johnpoz

hmmm - yeah pretty sure its suppose to be default.. Odd - will have to do some research on why it would be off out of the box.

NonagonInf

Thanks again and yeah I'd definitely be interested to know why they are that way.

johnpoz

What nic do you have, and were you wireless and then moved to wireless. What driver on the nics? Windows default one? Or manufactures?

johnpoz

What build of windows 10 are you running?

NonagonInf

It was wired connection, and the Windows default drivers.

Windows Build: 18363.720
Nic: Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (7) I219-V

SteveITS

Lurking by this thread, how old is the PC? I remember some issues several years ago and turning off RSS at a few clients. A quick search yielded articles like:
https://www.dell.com/support/article/en-ag/sln249772/how-to-resolve-performance-tuning-and-connectivity-issues?lang=en
https://support.docuware.com/en-us/knowledgebase/article/KBA-35306
https://serverfault.com/questions/726172/is-rss-receive-side-scaling-in-windows-considered-unstable
In other words could this be a legacy setting carried forward to Windows 10?

NonagonInf

@teamits It's only a couple of years old, so I don't expect that it's a legacy issue. I've installed Win10 a few times on it since then anyhow.