Is this hardware sufficient for PFSense for a multi-gig 5Gig/5Gig connection?

jprez1980

Hello,

I have PFSense virtualized with Proxmox. The proxmox host has the following specs:

2x E5-2643 CPUs @ 3.30GHz
512GB ECC RAM
10TB Storage

The PF Sense VM has been configured as follows:

1 CPU with 8 Cores allocated, highest priority VM - set to Host CPU instead of emulating a CPU type.
16GB dedicated (non balooned) RAM
128 GB Hard Disk
Intel X550-T2 NIC passed thru directly to the VM for the WAN connection
Intel X540-T2 NIC passed thur directly tot he VM for the LAN connection

Speeds struggle - I get around 2500 Down and 2800 Up. If I connect directly to the ISP modem, I get 4500down and 4500 up on average.

The ISP does not use PPPoE, it's a /29 static block.

Is there a configuration issue or does the hardware as it's configured not support this speed? If it's a hardware issue, is there a lower priced small form factor computer that'll do better?

Thanks

netblues

@jprez1980
Proxmox is kvm and is hardly the speed curlpit

Try narrowing down the tests with iperf3
Test pf to lan and then with two hosts one in wan and one on lan, iperf traffic via pf
and see what speeds you get.
Since you have passed thru the cards you can't test them at the proxmox level.
which would be also something to test.

jprez1980

@netblues So this hardware and configuration should be sufficient?

netblues

@jprez1980 Well., this hardware is 12 years old and considered obsolete.
So what do you mean by lower priced?
If you consider power consumption, this equipment is a money burner.

Gut feeling it probably tops at 3Gbit routing but you should check it with iperf and two pc's connected at 10g speeds with pf in between to be sure.
Of courseif we add packet filtering ids/ips etc this will be much less.