Not getting 1 gpbs on new pfSense box
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So I just installed pfSense on a Dell Optiplex 755 which has an Intel E6550 @ 2.33GHz and 2GB DDR2 RAM. The panel says my connection interfaces are 1000baseT <full-duplex>. I just did a file transfer test and the speed was not 1000mbps, but instead were around 50 MiB (~419mbps ).
I'm curious at to why. Is it my CPU, RAM, NIC, software related, or what? I can reach speeds of 950mbps to my Linux server on the same switch.</full-duplex>
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What kind of NICs?
What kind of file(s)?
What are you transferring the file(s) between?
What kind of media are the file(s) coming off of and going on to?There are a ton of different variables that could affect LAN throughput.
Maybe give iperf a shot in the package manager if you are trying to see what your pfsense box is capable of on the LAN side.
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=43393.msg224960#msg224960Also a quick google search comes up with article of free tools.
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/network-benchmark-test-your-network-speed/ -
Two 82566DMs in the Optiplex? Or 1 NIC and VLANs?
Steve
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What kind of NICs?
What kind of file(s)?
What are you transferring the file(s) between?
What kind of media are the file(s) coming off of and going on to?There are a ton of different variables that could affect LAN throughput.
Maybe give iperf a shot in the package manager if you are trying to see what your pfsense box is capable of on the LAN side.
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=43393.msg224960#msg224960Also a quick google search comes up with article of free tools.
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/network-benchmark-test-your-network-speed/1. Intel
82566DM Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000
2. It's a random 5gb video file i happened to have
3. I'm using my Desktop Rig. NIC: Intel I218V (Gigabit LAN PHY 10/100/1000 Mb/s) Again, this PC gets 950 mbps to a Linux server on the same switch.
4. SSD in the desktop 160gb HDD in the pfSense (which while typing typing this I forgot about and is probably the bottleneck)Do you know how to test disk write speed in pfSense by chance?
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Two 82566DMs in the Optiplex? Or 1 NIC and VLANs?
Steve
No just one interface right now. I just installed pfSense to see if the machine is capable of running it with 1 gbps throughput. I'm going to order a new NIC with more ports when I can make sure it's speedy enough.
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The HDD speed in pfSense won't make much difference if you're just moving traffic through the firewall. The only time that might make a difference is if you were moving data actually onto the firewall HDD with SCP perhaps.
Steve
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In that case try fetching a file to /dev/null from the firewall to rule out the HDD.
Of course that only tests one NIC so it's not the same as throughput with two NICs which is more demanding.
Steve
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The HDD speed in pfSense won't make much difference if you're just moving traffic through the firewall. The only time that might make a difference is if you were moving data actually onto the firewall HDD with SCP perhaps.
Steve
It's an older HDD though (SATA 2)
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In that case try fetching a file to /dev/null from the firewall to rule out the HDD.
Of course that only tests one NIC so it's not the same as throughput with two NICs which is more demanding.
Steve
Do you know what the command for that is? I'm new to FreeBSD.
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It's possible that the HDD is the bottleneck a single large file if you are actually moving that file on to/off of that HDD. Even a 5400rpm laptop drive should be able to push one file at well over 50MB/s, maybe not gigabit, especially for smaller files but I wouldn't expect it to max out at 50MB/s. But if the HDD is busy doing a lot of other things at the same time then it could certainly be the problem.
Your NIC's should have no issues at gigabit speed at all.
If you're running a bunch of other stuff on your pfsense setup (snort/suricata, pfBNG, squid) then it's more likely that the CPU or HDD is the problem. You can look at CPU performance in Status / Monitoring while transferring the file to see if that is the issue, same thing with your RAM. You can use iostat in the shell to check the HDD performance as well. https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?iostat
If you're really curious about your LAN's performance use iperf in combination with the above monitoring tools to see what it's capable of.
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It's possible that the HDD is the bottleneck a single large file if you are actually moving that file on to/off of that HDD. Even a 5400rpm laptop drive should be able to push one file at well over 50MB/s, maybe not gigabit, especially for smaller files but I wouldn't expect it to max out at 50MB/s. But if the HDD is busy doing a lot of other things at the same time then it could certainly be the problem.
Your NIC's should have no issues at gigabit speed at all.
If you're running a bunch of other stuff on your pfsense setup (snort/suricata, pfBNG, squid) then it's more likely that the CPU or HDD is the problem. You can look at CPU performance in Status / Monitoring while transferring the file to see if that is the issue, same thing with your RAM. You can use iostat in the shell to check the HDD performance as well. https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?iostat
If you're really curious about your LAN's performance use iperf in combination with the above monitoring tools to see what it's capable of.
Welp. I just opened up the PC to find the model number of the drive. I did some Google searching, and it turns out the drive has an average sequential speed of 59.7MB/s which is close enough to the 50MiB/s I was getting.
I guess it's time to purchase a new drive! I will probably buy a cheap and small SSD. Thanks for your help. :)
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If your Linux server can server something over http/s then:
fetch -o /dev/null http://yourserverIP/sometestfile.bigOtherwise you can FTP it or you could SCP it but that introduces massive encryption overhead.
Steve
