Extremely bizarre pfsense behavior of slow internet
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I have an ADSL Internet connection which I protect with pfsense. The adsl router/modem dials a pppoe connection for internet access. The pfsense is connected via ethernet to the modem. there is a another ethernet in the pfsense box connected to the local lan. This setup works. On a FRESH install of pfsense without any addons and just the interfaces configured my clients get internet access. HOWEVER a weird problem exists. The download speeds on the clients are extremely slow ( around 36Kbps ) whereas if I connect any client directly to the ADSL router/modem through either wried or wifi connections they get about 800Kbps. And another bizarre thing is when these clients are connected through pfsense but load youtube videos they get the approx 800Kbps speeds. Its like pfsense is throttling download speeds when no traffic shaping has been enabled or configured...
Losing my mind over this. Any help will be appreciated.
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@samgurung have you tried setting your ADSL router/modem into bridge mode?
You may be suffering from double NAT. All traffic is having to pass through 2 firewalls and be double NATed. If your ADSL router/modem has a bridge mode (probably unlikely) then try using that. Otherwise, in your ADSL router/modem, try looking for the settings to disable NAT and if possible also the firewall.
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@peter_richardson Thank you for that. I have made the changes. Made the ADSL modem a bridge and pfsense is now doing pppoe. Connection speeds seem to improved considerably. But it still does not explain why youtube connections were much faster than downloads. Any light you can shed on this?
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That's great to hear!
As far as the YouTube content... Hmmm that's a tricky one! Might be a little bit beyond my pay grade! Ruling out a coincidence, I'd be thinking it's something to do with the port that they use or a connection (firewall state) being kept open, but I'd only be guessing.