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    How to get Bell Fibe in Quebec/Ontario (Internet and IPTV) working with pfSense

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

      Did you add the values recommended here yet?
      https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/hardware/tune.html#pppoe-with-multi-queue-nics

      Steve

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        Patian @stephenw10
        last edited by

        @stephenw10
        Thank you for your advise.
        I am not aware of such setting. I will study it and give it a try.

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          techanalyst @Patian
          last edited by

          @patian The link that stephenw10 gave has most of the things I followed when I used pfsense but I switched to untangle, mostly because its linux, and I use BBR, the speed differences for folks was significant, any speed test across the contry on bell I get almost my max speeds or better. speedtest.jpg

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          • stephenw10S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            Nice, I can only dream of a connection like that. 😉

            Yeah, if you have a PPPoE connection that fast you're unlikely to fill it with anything FreeBSD based while that single thread restriction exists. You would need something very fast for single thread use. Up to 1Gbps is possible on reasonable hardware though.

            Steve

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              techanalyst @stephenw10
              last edited by

              @stephenw10 said in How to get Bell Fibe in Quebec/Ontario (Internet and IPTV) working with pfSense:

              Yeah, if you have a PPPoE connection that fast you're unlikely to fill it with anything FreeBSD based while that single thread restriction exists. You would need something very fast for single thread use. Up to 1Gbps is possible on reasonable hardware though.

              Don't get me wrong, I love pfsense, theres so much it does out of box that just works and just works well. FreeBSD is a minor limiter here, nothing to do with pfsense. The machine I'm running this on is a dual 2699v4 :) I was able to tweak to ALMOST match, download actually wasn't any different, upload is where I saw my speed limits but were talking getting 890 vs 1000, keeping in mind sure I have a good upload but we don't see the drops on the ONT.

              Linux just seems more flexible, BBR alone made all the world a difference for me and hosting my plex server, people can now stream 140Mbit remux blurays off me, with reno/cubic they can't.

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              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                Interesting. BBR should make no significant difference on a firewall/router as the TCP connections are not terminated there. It would all be on the forwarded hosts.

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                  techanalyst @stephenw10
                  last edited by

                  @stephenw10 Thats what you'd think and thats the theory, but I retested new reno/cubic on linux, folks max out at 35-55mbit from me out of the local province, within province they're fine, outside, the most stable bitrate is 20mbit, with BBR on the firewall, the absolutely only change I've made, they can pull original at 140 no issue, also did FTP/file share tests, same speed limit. So I agree with you, but the results tell us something different. We can saturate my pipe with BBR, anything else we can't and the only change is BBR, nothing on clients etc (cant change the dummy clients).

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                    techanalyst @stephenw10
                    last edited by

                    @stephenw10 Here's an example, this guy is located in Florida, he was never able to do more than a 10Mbit stream on me (Pfsense, reno or cubic, linux anything reno or cubic), with BBR, he's been doing these streams, starts as he says "instantly", never buffers and never pauses, totally not doable otherwise. He's also doing it over a wireless ISP and his apple tv is wireless....so its impressive.

                    example.jpg

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                      Patian @techanalyst
                      last edited by

                      @techanalyst
                      I followed the work around method as described under "PPPoE with Multi-Queue NICs" and added the 3 parameters into the Advance>System Tunable.

                      net.isr.dispatch=deferred
                      net.isr.maxthreads=4 (tried for 2 and 1, not much difference)
                      net.isr.numthreads=4 (tried for 2 and 1, not much difference)

                      I saw a slight improvement on the speed. 767down, 607up.
                      The speed test was done on using speedtest website on Firefox.

                      But if I use the speedtest for MacOS apps, the result was close to the ISP said value, 891down, 756up.

                      Is the apps more accurate then using the website speedtest?

                      Do I need to try on other parameters as described on the page?
                      ie, manipulate the /boot/loader.conf.local file?

                      The SG-5100 from netgate store should have been optimized to make its compatible with pfsense with minimize tuning needed.

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                        techanalyst @Patian
                        last edited by

                        @patian install and test with the cli version or the app, browsers can introduce some pool

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                          techanalyst @techanalyst
                          last edited by

                          @techanalyst https://www.speedtest.net/apps/cli

                          Test from clients, also if you're running Win 10 change the congestion control provider to CUBIC. I was able to test 10Gbit (actually was getting about 9.1-9.3Gbps), so pfsense has the ability to forward as crazy awesome rates. Ill be back once they go with FreeBSD 13

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                            Patian @techanalyst
                            last edited by

                            @techanalyst
                            I followed the link and tried to install the freeBSD version of speedtest on the box, using command prompt, but failed. I typed the same command as on the website for freeBSD version.
                            Anyway, on the netgate forum, I read a post on this and tried

                            pkg update ; pkg install -y py37-speedtest-cli

                            Installation successful, Then

                            speedtest

                            Failed with error:
                            Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
                            Traceback (most recent call last):
                            File "/usr/local/bin/speedtest", line 11, in <module>
                            load_entry_point('speedtest-cli==2.1.2', 'console_scripts', 'speedtest')()
                            File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/speedtest.py", line 1986, in main
                            shell()
                            File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/speedtest.py", line 1875, in shell
                            secure=args.secure
                            File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/speedtest.py", line 1091, in init
                            self.get_config()
                            File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/speedtest.py", line 1174, in get_config
                            map(int, server_config['ignoreids'].split(','))
                            ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: ''

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                              techanalyst @Patian
                              last edited by

                              @patian Use the gui to execute the command :) at that point you just run speedtest

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                                techanalyst @Patian
                                last edited by

                                @patian BUT you should be running from clients and not the host, I can perfect results on the FW but it didnt always translate to client (example, TSO/LRO enabled or disabled on the FW host direct always yielded great tests but on clients, disabled always yielded the best results)

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                                  pjaneiro
                                  last edited by pjaneiro

                                  Hmm, anyone knows if something in bell’s config has changed ? since last friday i’ve been getting intermittent freezing while watching live or recorded shows, my old recorded shows play fine, it looks to me like an igmp issue, but nothing has changed, I was running 2.4.4 but upgraded to 2.5.1 hoping it would resolve it, this setup has been working great for the last two years

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                                    Chase84 @pjaneiro
                                    last edited by

                                    @pjaneiro Funny you should mention this. I went to watch live TV last night and experienced this on a few channels. I restarted the Bell tv box. No change. Restarted pfsense, no change. I left it on the channel I wanted to watch for about 3 or 4 minutes and then it was fine with no other intervention. Maybe just a Bell issue?

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                                      wp519
                                      last edited by

                                      Has anyone gotten this iptv working with more than 1 iptv box?

                                      Im the user have the troubles/tribulations at dslr trying to get 2 boxes working, one connected via ethernet, one connected via wifi (via a FibeTV#### ssid on my own AP).

                                      I have had limited success, it sometimes works for a day or so, then I will get the "10 second" pixelation problem.

                                      Pulling my hair out, as it seems I have everything set up the way it should.

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                                        techanalyst @wp519
                                        last edited by

                                        @wp519 Yes, I have two 4k PVR Units, verify the IGMP Config as well as the routes. I use to have the issues but it was usually route related (10.0.0.0/8 to the .36 interface), then you also want to check to make sure that your DNS settings are correct, I've seen that cause some 10 second issues

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                                        • idscommI
                                          idscomm @wp519
                                          last edited by

                                          @wp519

                                          There a write up here I put together, hope it can help you. It worked for me a other people.

                                          https://www.idscomm.ca/blog/bell-fibe-internet-iptv-with-pfsense

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                                            techanalyst @idscomm
                                            last edited by

                                            @idscomm said in How to get Bell Fibe in Quebec/Ontario (Internet and IPTV) working with pfSense:

                                            https://www.idscomm.ca/blog/bell-fibe-internet-iptv-with-pfsense

                                            Just note that you're bell aliant though correct?

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