Slow File Transfer and High CPU Load
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I've installed pfsense 1.2.3 RC1 on my old pc rig and it has 3 NICs installed. 1 NIC is for the WAN interface and the other 2 NIC is used for LAN (10.1.1.0/24, 10.1.2.0/24). The LAN NICs are the same linksys gigabit NIC running at 1000Mbps Full Duplex on CAT6 cables to a gigabit switch as well. The problem now is when I tried to copy a file from 10.1.2.0/24 on 10.1.1.0/24 subnet, the speed I can achive at maximum is only 50MB/s. Whereas if I copied from a computer on the same subnet it can achieve maximum gigabit speeds. Not only that, when the file transfer was in progress the cpu load on pfsense was up to 50% as well and it also increased latency on all other devices on the network. Are there any specific settings that I have to do to resolve this issue ???
btw here's the pc rig spec running pfsense
Intel Pentium 4 3.0ghz HT
1GB RAM DDR400
1x Realtek on board gigabit NIC
2x Linksys gigabit NIC (EG1032) (PCI)WAN->pfsense->(LAN 10.1.1.0/24)Asus Gigabit Switch->Other PCs
->Asus Wireless Router (running dd-wrt)
->(OPT1 10.1.2.0/24)Asus Gigabit Switch->Server farm -
a) You have 3 Realtek NICs. These are among the worst GigE NICs available, and performance reflects that.
b) You've got (at least) 2 NICs on the PCI bus, which is only a 1067mbit bus - all attached NICs must share this bandwidth, so your 50MB/s is probably saturating the PCIYou need better hardware for gigabit performance. At the very least moving the NICs to PCIe.