ATT poor upload speeds

Howler

Hello!

First time post here. I have been using PFsense running on about 4 years now. Lots of fun times and package work. Seems I am at a problem point though.

Up until a recent move, I had a local hometown provider who just put their Fiber gateway in bridge mode. It worked great. I saw about 940/900 mbp for down/up. As for the recent move though, I am stuck with AT&T business fiber. I have a BGW320-505 and when I plug into it, using the pass-through mode, I can get 950/950 with any of my own devices directly plugged into it; however, with PFsense I get around 500 down and less than a meg up which is quite a big issue. The 500 down I get with the double NAT'ing and how painful AT&T passthrough is; however, the less than a mb up is an issue and from my crawling through the web it seems I shouldn't have to do anything special to get it running. Figured I would start here with chasing down the issue.

I have done a clean install to be sure with no packages and issue persists.

2.5.2-RELEASE (amd64)
Intel(R) Pentium(R) Gold G5500 CPU @ 3.80GHz
8GB RAM

My bad if this has already been addressed, but I've done a bit of digging. Kind of sad I have a BGW320 otherwise I would be trying the pfatt bypass.

Thanks in advanced!

stephenw10

Less than 1Mbps sounds like a speed/duplex issue.

Check Status > Interfaces. Make sure it's linked at 1G with no errors or collisions showing.

Steve

Howler

@stephenw10

No collisions showing; however, a lot of errors. Starting to do a bit of digging. This post here is looking promising so I will dig into it.

https://forum.netgate.com/topic/77845/solved-in-out-errors-on-lan/14

WAN Interface
Status
up

MTU
1500
Media
1000baseT <full-duplex>
In/out packets
539154/419870 (433.56 MiB/48.27 MiB)
In/out packets (pass)
539154/419870 (433.56 MiB/48.27 MiB)
In/out packets (block)
2114/0 (140 KiB/0 B)
In/out errors
59778/0
Collisions
0

stephenw10

Ok that's not good. Try running ifconfig against it at the command prompt:

ifconfig -vvvm igb0

Assuming your WAN is igb0.

Steve

Howler

@stephenw10

ifconfig -vvvm em0

em0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        description: WAN
        options=81209b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        capabilities=953d9b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,LRO,WOL_UCAST,WOL_MCAST,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER,VLAN_HWTSO,NETMAP>
     
<Addresses Removed>

        media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
        status: active
        supported media:
                media autoselect
                media 1000baseT
                media 1000baseT mediaopt full-duplex
                media 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex
                media 100baseTX
                media 10baseT/UTP mediaopt full-duplex
                media 10baseT/UTP
        nd6 options=23<PERFORMNUD,ACCEPT_RTADV,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>

stephenw10

Hmm, could be some very low level incompatibility. I assume you've tried swapping out the cable? Changing the port?
Can you reassign the interfaces to use a different NIC as WAN in pfSense?

You might try disabling checksum offload in Sys > Adv > Networking (requires a reboot).

Steve

Howler

@stephenw10

I have tried different cables, though they're from the same batch. That and I do not have a speed issue when I use the same cable for different hardware, but a cable tester would make my life easier.

I disabled checksum offload earlier when I was running through some troubleshooting steps; however, no luck. My download did go up about 50 mbps though if that counts. Also tried conservative profile for connections when I did that.

As far as a different NIC. I have not. Will try and get back with you.

Howler

@stephenw10

Issue resolved. Many thanks!

Side note: Kind of blows my mind that it was working and then blatantly stopped, should have looked at the errors prior. I guess something got damaged when I moved even though I was extra careful with my hardware. It seems to be one specific port on my 2 port NIC. I swapped to the port on the motherboard for WAN and I am using the second port on the intel NIC. I'll keep an eye on it, but I am guessing I will eventually need to replace the intel NIC entirely.

Edit:

Should also add that now I see closer to expected speeds around 940/820, though that could just be local usage on that dip

stephenw10

Ah, nice catch. Yeah I'm always suspicious with one bad port on a NIC. If it's physically damaged you're probably OK but if it took an electrical surge is the other port going to fail....

Steve