PC Engine APU1d4 - Can't Break 1000Mbps - Should I Upgrade?
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I'm running pfsense on a https://pcengines.ch/apu1d4.htm (1 GHz dual core / 4 gb ddr-1066) and can't break 1000Mbps (usually getting ~500Mbps).
If I were to upgrade to a APU2 might I be able to break that barrier? Trying to figure out if my limitation is truly hardware based. Thanks for the help!
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500Mbps is quite fast for the APU1, I usually expect to see closer to 350Mbps through that. Though it depends how and what you are measuring.
You will need to upgrade if you want full Gigabit throughput.Steve
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I am using APU2 and I'm nowhere near 1Gb speed. You need a better CPU if you want to route at 1Gb speed on pfsense, at least that is my experience. I'm currently looking at a supermicro board for that specific reason.
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Actual APU2 with Intel NICs? What speed do you see?
Steve
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@Stefan-Milev Have you tried any of the tweaks suggested at https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/apu2-1-gigabit-throughput-pfsense/ ?
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Yes with the intel NICs. I have the APU2C4 board. It was some time ago so I don'r remember exactly but I was around the 650 -700Mb/s figure. I did the modification before that and did not see the benefit I expected.
It may be because I was running the iperf server on the pfsense side and the client was on the LAN subnet.
My idea was to test the performance of the NIC itself first, without taking into account the firewall/software side. I see that in that link the test is made between the WAN and the LAN side. I'm maybe misunderstanding the whole situation.
I will rerun the tests this weekend with a slightly different setup that I have now and will report the results here. -
Yeah running iperf on pfSense will not give you a good result. pfSense is not a good server, it's not optimised as an end point for connections. Also the iperf process itself uses significant CPU cycles that could be used to move packets.
Test between two hosts on WAN and LAN.Steve
