Try to download a 500GB file/VM via FTP and see how packetloss and timeouts affect performance

Cool_Corona

Hi there

Downloading a wide variety of VM's and pfsense just chokes despite Suricata disabled and running on 1 core only.

It takes about 20 seconds for the transfer to resume and timeouts every 8-10 minutes.

Any ideas?

Nothing in the logs at all.

verizu

do you have some sort of monitoring in place that could help investigate the bottleneck ?

Cool_Corona

Nothing in the server logs at all (application, security, setup, system)

Everything is running as it should serverside.

Only thing that sticks out.

verizu

hmm maybe try using legacy blocking mode (pcap) instead of netmap ?

johnpoz

Well I don't think I have ever downloaded a single 500GB file.. But I have downloaded say 30GB worth of files that are like 2GB each via ftp recently as a test for ftp (dead protocol) speed vs syncing the data via resilio And never seen an issue..

But I have many days of downloading from my server. with large amounts of data.. Looking sofar for may I am at 2.86TB for the month.. Most likely I could top 3TB this month.. I have quite a few files to still grab..

I have never seen such an issue downloading anything.. And I download quite a bit, but its mostly via https from my server and using multiple streams to max it out my connection 500Mbps.. I normally get 60MBps - and this runs at that speed sustained for the transfer... Not sure I want to test with 500GB file ;) but sure could zip up some files on the server to create a decent sized file and download that via ftp..

It's zipping up now.. Will download and let you know how it goes. I need to grab the files anyway.

Cool_Corona

Filezilla is the FTP client but could try WinSCP instead.

30GB is not a problem banging away with 400mbit. It needs to run for a while.

Maybe 100GB would cut it.

johnpoz

Ok 55ish gig file created on server.. Its downloading now - I will keep an eye on it... Got it up on my other monitor, see if I notice if it stalls.

edit: Ok 10 min in... Haven't noticed any sort of stalls or blips.. Its just rocking away.

edit2: Ok 20 min in... Have not noticed any sort of blips or stalls.. I would think such a stall would of been a big hit on the transfer rate.. Which is staying pretty freaking close to what it started at.

edit3: ok complete - 30 min transfer.. Never saw any blips...

You saying your seeing it stall like every 8-10 I should of seen atleast 2..

Status:	File transfer successful, transferred 55,293,613,316 bytes in 1802 seconds

Pretty much sustained 30MBps the whole time..

Something on the box your downloading from, their connection, your connection... But I don't see it as something wrong with pfsense.. Other than an increase in the interrupts.. My 4860 didn't even seem to break a sweat..

Cool_Corona

Thanks for the efforts. I am seeing a 6% packetloss so far.

Have to look into some hardware issues. BRB.

Cool_Corona

Changed the NIC to an Intel ET adapter from a Marwell Yukon. No packetloss and so far still a stable connection.

Looks like the Marwell driver has a memory leak.