Home connection - external bandwith.
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This one is going to be difficult to explain so bear with me.....very new to PFSense, and also being in IT for a job - networking is my weakest suit hence running a pfsense router at home!...From the top...
Ive got a 350meg incoming connection (UK) on the Virgin Media service. PFSense is running on an old Core i5 Nuc with a 250gb Msata drive and 8gb of memory - the wan is connected to a Gigabit USB ethernet dongle.
The dashboard - from what i can see shows me that nothing is running at its max....cpu load is usually 20% ish, temps are 70 odd deg. So in summary its a walk in the park for the hardware. Ive got squid running as i thought that would help with performance (caching webpages etc etc) and seeing as its not breaking a sweat i think thats ok....
If i instigate a download (nzb) in this case it will max out at 5 meg, ip streams on the tv will start to break up - kids will see a drop in ping on their games etc etc....so by all accounts its maxed out (or to me looks like it is)
So, with all the above im not sure on the pfsense to see where the problem is. As a balance, my old asus router would download an nzb at approx 20 meg and everything else in the house would be fine....my initial though is, is the dongle the bottleneck - but i cant see where to look or where to start...
Any help would be appreciated. Cheers.
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The ethernet to usb dongles are not recommended. I think most of them have something other than intel drivers. Which is the recommended driver type. If you are able to get a second nic that would likely be your best bet.
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@hieroglyph Well, there-in lies the problem - its a nuc....so theres no option to fit a second network card hence the usb dongle....is there a "certified" usb dongle atall....swapping my router out has become very expensive!....as im into £400.00 for 2 access points so far...!
Is there anyone else thats done the kind of setup that ive got? Not, not taking on board what your saying can i definitively prove its the usb dongle?
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@comfy The other thing (Clutching at straws here) that ive read but not done - is the one thing that i do see is the usb dongles dont support the traffic shaping option (wondering if thats the issue) but there was, i read, a hack where you could edit a file to force the issue and get it to do it....
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@comfy Just replying to myself here but, the more and more i look the more and more it seems that other people have run into usb dongle performance issues....as much as id like to stick with the nuc (it was free hardware) it looks like i cant (but it'd be nice to exhaust the possibilities with this setup)
Looking at alternatives ive got a load of ddr3 so dimm memory (a couple of 8's and a couple of 4's) and also an 250gb msata disc - so something low powered (cheap would be nice) and capable of taking my memory and Disc would be peachy....
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@comfy Thinking out loud here when i first came across the problem last week i did have another spare usb nic ( an official microsoft surface pro one ) i plugged it in but couldnt work out how to get the wan connection swtiched over to it....(the pfs sense did see it though) just couldnt work out how to switch it over....
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@comfy Ok - so - bit of a result....i had another NuC ( an i3 model ) with 16gb of memory and a 256msata ssd. And im now getting 4 times more on the nzb download. Ill see if i can find something to max it out....its literally booted up and running - not applied any packages yet...
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@comfy Reckon im sorted. Did a download of a Win10 image (im assuming this is going to coming from a relatively meaty bandwidth source....)
Getting 30 meg on the download (im on a 35meg connection) so allowing for isp traffic im happy with that....ive not applied any settings, rules or packages yet so gonna start that now....
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@comfy I have not heard of an "approved" usb nic. But I have never really looked. Sounds like you might have found a viable solution.
I have also read of ppl using their single nic as both WAN and LAN. Never tried it myself. But I think that requires a VLAN capable switch. Plugging your modem, pfsense box, and LAN devices into the switch. Putting the modem on VLANx, the LAN devices on VLANy, and the single pfsense nic on VLANx+VLANy. The pfbox nic would be doing double duty for both LAN and WAN. So I think the drawback there is you only get, at max, half of the speed. So a 1gb nic would become a 500mb nic. Which may not be an issue if your max connection speed is 350mb.
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@hieroglyph Yeah - well, from what i can see im getting almost if not full speed - i can only think that the WAN now being on the NuC's onboard intel connection means that pfsense can take advantage of the hardware whereas inside - the usb dongle is just a Lan connection that doesnt need anything special in that its on my internal network....
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@comfy Perfect. Glad you were able to find a solution.
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@hieroglyph Cheers - thanks for the help - its only been running for an hour or so....ive got teenagers so they arent out of bed yet but if theres any issues ill soon know about it..!
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@comfy Just some further notes....i put the original NuC back on the network. Used the command line option on the screen hooked up to the NuC to swap the Lan and Wan round....strangely it didnt work....download stayed at 6 meg....i dont have a great deal of settings on there so reflashed from a usb stick....working again now. The reason i switched back over to the i5 was that the i3 didnt support the hardware encryption and thought the i5 might be a bit better from a cpu grunt point of view....
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@comfy Im learning fast....ive got a few general questions...ok to ask here or post a new thread...?
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@comfy If they are not related to Routing and Multi WAN, it is probably best to ask them in the appropriate Category > Topic. Else if they are related you can ask them here.
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@hieroglyph Bit of everything really so ill post another one up! Thanks.