Slow Speeds

asphalt3

Hi,
I’m pretty new to this, so please correct me if I’m wrong. To begin, I have a 1gbs internet connection and I need to access pfsense web GUI remotely.

My issues:

Day 1 (FYI)
I installed pfsense on an old 1 core Pentium pc.
The setup was modem to pfsense to access point. The download speeds were below 50mbs. Therefore I went to system and enabled AES-NI. The download speed went up to 100mbs and so did the cpu usage that went to 80-100%.

Conclusion:
Weak cpu

Day 2 (FYI)
Bought a used thinkcenter desktop with an i5 2400.
Setup up pfsense on it the speeds where 800mbs+

Day 3
Reseted the pc. Installed windows, VirtualBox and team viewer. After running into issues i bought a cheap router netgear wnr3500. The setup is modem > router > thinkcenter with the pfsense vm > ap
AES-NI enable

Issue:

The download speed doesn’t go over 50mbs (even though have 4gb ram for this virtual machine and 4 cpus).

Thanks in advance

KOM

Go through this first and see if anything helps.

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/interfaces/low-throughput-troubleshooting.html

asphalt3

@KOM thanks will do

kiokoman

i don't understand why you installed windows and a vm to run pfsense and added a modem/router later, was not working on day 2 ? so now do you have a double nat situation ?

asphalt3

@kiokoman day 2 was the i5 and pfsense directly on it. So the setup was modem>pfsense>access point

I needed to access the web GUI remotely so I installed windows and then pfsense in the virtual box.

Thanks

kiokoman

hell no, man, you don't need windows or teamviewer to access it remotely, you just need to configure openvpn or ssh + tunnel with putty to access it

asphalt3

@kiokoman i red on it and looked at YouTube videos but it seemed like people had access to black and white interface not the web GUI. For this reason I though it wasn’t possible to access remotely to the web GUI.

kiokoman

of course it's possible
i will suggest you to go back to day 2 asap
after that you can ask for specifical instruction on howto access the webgui from remote

KOM

Either way will work depending on your use case. In my virtual lab, I use a vm to control pfSense from the LAN side, which is separate from my real LAN ( real LAN acts as the lab's WAN). In production, I would use OpenVPN to connect securely and then access WebGUI via the OpenVPN server interface.

asphalt3

@KOM do you experience slow downs? Is it okay if my router between the modem and host is in AP mode or I have to change something on it ?

KOM

No, I don't have any speed issues. I've had issues in the past with VMXNET3 NICs, though. Perhaps try again with Intel e1000? I'd also pay attention to speed and duplex settings, which can really cause all sorts of problems. That old PC might have crappy NICs in it, likely Realtek which are known to be iffy at best. You might benefit form picking up a real Intel or Broadcom card and using that. Your wifi router should be put in AP mode (disable WAN, disable DHCP server, connect LAN port to LAN switch) and run it behind pfSense.

asphalt3

@KOM ok thanks will try that