WAN speed not capable of passing 470mbit on a 1 Gbps line

dsme94

Hi,

I have a fresh install of virtualized pfSense install on a Dell R210 II server featuring a E31220 CPU.

I am using Proxmox as my hypervisor.

My ISP is Virgin Media, they are a cable provider and use DOCSIS 3.1.

My R210 has a BCM5716 network card and prior to configuring pfSense, I was able to get speeds close to the gigabit speeds I pay for.

The Virgin supplied router (based off Arris’s Touchstone TG3492) is plugged into one of the ports in my R210 and the other port runs into the gigabit network switch which distributes ethernet to other servers in the rack, my office upstairs, and supplies ethernet to the access points.

Within Proxmox I have the ethernet cards bridged and using model 'Intel E1000'. I tried to do a PCI passthrough but I couldn't get this to work properly after enabling IOMMU. As soon as I attach the PCI card to the pfSense virtual machine, I loose all internet connectivity and have to use KVM to connect to the server.

Disable hardware TCP segmentation offload
Hardware Large Receive Offloading
Disable hardware large receive offload

All checked

stephenw10

Make sure you also disable checksum off-load if you're using vtnet NICs (VirtIO).

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/recipes/virtualize-proxmox.html#configuring-pfsense-software-to-work-with-proxmox-virtio

Steve

dsme94

@stephenw10 Thanks Stephen, I am using 'Intel E1000' model NICs but this option is disabled.

stephenw10

Ah, well you will get better performance using virtio then. Only hardware pass-through is faster.

dsme94

@stephenw10 thanks again, I changed the model to 'VirtIO (paravirtualized)' and can confirm the speed is now better than it was when using the Virgin Media supplied router (Super Hub 4) directly into the switch.

Prior to setting up the pfSense I used to regularly get around 860mbps, but the connection would drop and settle at around 600mbps, which to me now implies that the Super Hub can't handle the speed consistenly? No idea but I'm happy now.

Before with Intel E1000
alt text

After with Virtio
alt text

stephenw10

Ah, nice result.