pfsense stops providing internet when having to deal with lots of connections.

compiz

Hi, I am running pfsense 23.01 on a proxmox vm as my main bridge router for my home network.
The installation is on an intel nuc 10th gen with i5 cpu, there is the onboard nic 1gbps that connects to my ISP's router that does the VDSL sync and from that nic the PPPoE login happens(I have also added this nic as interface so I can access my ISP's router).
Then there is a 2nd NIC on the thunderbolt/USB Type c port that is 2.5gbps, this NIC manages the proxmox' interface and the LAN.
None of the is passthrough to the VM of pfsense but rather from proxmox added as VMBR0 for WAN and VMBR1 for LAN.
Under it on the same NUC there are 2 VM, 1 pi-hole and 1 more for lancache, pfsense serves pi-hole's IP as DNS and pi-hole upstreams to the lancache, lancache upstreams to 1.1.1.1

Now where the problem is? When I am watching let's say a video on youtube and I try to download something at the same time, after maybe 30"? There is no internet at ALL!
I have tried eliminating elements but they all seem to work, except pfsense, pfsense seems to be connected to the internet, the GUI responds and all but restarting it doesn't fix the problem. I have to shutdown(stop) the VM from proxmox' and start it again. Then I have internet normally.

My assumption was that maybe the usb type c 2.5gbps is the problem but everything else that uses that NIC works without issues!
The first time it happen, I had to reboot the NUC in order to get internet access again. After a few times that I did, I have started eliminating pi-hole and lancache one at a time or all together but the problem remained.
In the end the only thing that has been left is pfsense and this is fixes it as I said above if I stop the VM completely and start it again. Normal reboot via pfsense itself doesn't work.

Any ideas how to fix this?
Any config you want me to post?

Thanks!

Kind regards,
George

FSC830

@compiz I have to shutdown(stop) the VM from proxmox' and start it again. Then I have internet normally.
... Normal reboot via pfsense itself doesn't work.

Sounds for me, that the Hypervisor has some issue with the NIC for the VM when traffic increases?
But its only guesswork, I am using an appliance for real life, pfSense at VM is only in test environment without traffic (or very few traffic).

Regards

compiz

@fsc830 This is what i thought initially as well, that's why i did extensive tests but I have to eliminate this as the NIC works flawlessly with every other VM/scenario with full performance!
I have narrowed it down to pfsense itself, now bad config? not sure!
pfsense sees both nics virtual and not physical.
Almost the same setup i am using on a dedicated server is hetzner without issues there regarding traffic. There i got 1gbps symmetric and it performs great!
At home, i thought that maybe the cpu is not strong enough and i had it using 1 core, now I have it with 4 cores but still the same problem.

compiz

I think I have fixed it.
Since I've added to pfsense to see my ISP's router interface, I had to change the default gateway from auto to the proper gateway.
So far it seems to be working as it should!