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    Cannot get over 250Mbps using either embedded platform or corei5 with server NIC

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • T Offline
      TeknikL
      last edited by

      :-[

      I recently upgraded to Rogers 1gbps internet, my pfsense 2.3.1 embedded platform is running quad intel nics and no matter what I do, I cannot seem to get better than 250mbps on speedtests through NAT.

      I thought it may be the atom processors although there are 4 of them, so I loaded up a core i5 with 8gb memory and a dual gigabit intel server NIC on PCIe and got exactly the same results.

      if I plug a laptop directly into the modem I get about 750mbps to speedtest.net but of course I can't check that directly from the pfsense box itself.

      I checked and unchecked about every combination of settings in the network advanced adapter settings, no difference.

      I cut out the cisco 2960G switch in the middle too, and still got the same results.

      I have verified there's no limiter configured.

      Any help would be greatly appreciated.

      Looking for any insight as to why I'm limited at 250mbps.

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      • T Offline
        TeknikL
        last edited by

        Correction, the embedded has 4xgigabit Intel

        the Corei5 is 2x gigabit Broadcom

        same speeds.

        Thanks!

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        • W Offline
          W4RH34D
          last edited by

          Whats the freq of the cpu?

          Did you really check your cables?

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          • T Offline
            TeknikL
            last edited by

            Breakthrough, I feel silly but I would not have expected that the Intel 82579LM gigabit LAN on my Dell Core i7 laptop would be the bottleneck…

            I built a VMware esxi on the same core i5 hardware I used for the pfsense and loaded up a Windows10 test machine and it's getting 400mbit throughput off the embedded platform (to be expected from an atom based platform, never thought it would NAT 1gbps).

            About 450mbits down through NAT with cores at 100%, 62%, 65% and 2% on this poor atom platform.

            I did try loading the config into a vmware copy of the firewall but running the vmware pfsense and the test box just slowed things down a little. I will be trying a brand-newish piece of hardware for this 1gbps needed of NAT. Will report back if it works out, so far 450-500mbps is the best I can do.

            stats of the embedded platform:
            Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU D2550 @ 1.86GHz
            4 CPUs: 1 package(s) x 2 core(s) x 2 HTT threads
            memory 4GB
            Disk is mSATA 64gb, super fast.

            any suggestions on Ethernet brand would be great.

            450mbps.png
            450mbps.png_thumb

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            • H Offline
              heper
              last edited by

              serverclass intel nics are always a good bet

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              • H Offline
                Harvy66
                last edited by

                My 3.1ghz Haswell i5 with an Intel i350-T2 NIC is getting 2Gb/s(1Gb bidirectional) with NAT and traffic shaping out of the box PFSense, while hovering about 10% CPU. If I disable traffic shaping, it's about 5% CPU. When it comes to a firewall, the NIC is the most important part. You must get a high quality one that has good driver support.

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