Mixing different NIC Speeds (1Gb & 10Gb) Performance Problem Question
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Just on remote speed test thus far
Try fast.com and speedtest.net
as dumb as fast.com is, its seems to highlight the issue immediately.
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Mmm, I hit that exact symptom recently and it turned out to be an MTU/MSS issue. The test at fast.com takes ages to start doing anything, then gives some crappy download figure and errors out on the upload.
Try setting an MSS value on the interface in pfSense as a test. I'd just use, say, 1460 to be sure.
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Well that's very interesting.
All my MTU's are 1500 though, (PF WAN & LAN) all my switchports etc. Are you suggesting I change that everywhere to 1460, that seems like a pain for sure.
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Nope it only needs to be set in one place. pf will force it to that when it passes the traffic as long as pf-scrub is enabled. So I would add it on the pfSense internal interface.
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Wouldn't that cause packet fragmentation though, all the clients are going to be hitting the PF Lan Nic at a MTU of 1500.
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No it should cause TCP to just send smaller packets. Where I hit it doing that completely resolved the issue even though it shouldn't have done anything as far as I could see. But something had broken PMTU. Took waaay too long to find it
Hard to see how the 1G switch interface could do that but the symptoms you're seeing are so similar it's worth trying. It's trivial to test too.
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Ill try it, but what is "pf-scrub" how do I enable.
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@ngr2001 I was the one that gave you the solution for your Cisco 3650 with the qos setting. This is a TCP Flow Control issue and I have more or less been trying to resolve this issue for 3 years now. I am going to make an educated guess that you are using the Comcast XB8. DOCSIS does not actually support TCP Flow Control which is what you want. You can use Ethernet Flow Control but it is a blunt sledgehammer solution pausing all traffic on the pfSense LAN interface. The XB8 also doesn't truly go into bridge mode as it still reaches out to the Comcast headend and receives its own public IPv4/6 to use with its hidden BSSIDs. Do a quick Google on TCP Flow Control and DOCSIS and you will see what I mean. DOCSIS has its own method for handling congestion.
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pfscrub is enabled by default:
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/config/advanced-firewall-nat.html#disable-firewall-scrubYou can see how it's applied if you check the ruleset in /tmp/rules.debug. For example:
scrub from any to <vpn_networks> fragment no reassemble scrub from <vpn_networks> to any fragment no reassemble scrub on $WAN inet all fragment reassemble scrub on $WAN inet6 all fragment reassemble scrub on $LAN inet all max-mss 1440 fragment reassemble scrub on $LAN inet6 all max-mss 1420 fragment reassembleWhere I have set an MSS value of 1480 on LAN.
Also see: https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=pf.conf#TRAFFIC%09NORMALIZATION
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ah, thank you for chiming back in and the previous help.
In regards to my service, I have Xfinity Branded 2Gb/300Mb Cable Internet. I do not have any of the ISP gear. I have a single RG6 drop in the basement which is connected to my own private Netgear CM3000 DOCSIS 3.1 Cable modem.
https://www.netgear.com/home/wifi/modems/cm3000/That Modem has a 2.5Gb NIC that is connected to my PFSense WAN @ 2.5Gb. I used DHCP on the WAN to get an IP from Xfinity that for the most part is fairly static, rarely changes. I also have IPV6 enabled and working very well, all my internal clients are getting IPV6 addresses and IPV6 connectivity has been verified.
Going back to what you just stated though, If you are saying that a DOCSIS connection does not support flow-control, then would it make sense to disable flow control on only the PFSense WAN NIC, but then leave enabled on the PF LAN NIC and also on all my switchports ?
I also scored a Cisco WS-C3850-12X48U-S 48x (12x MultiGB) on ebay last night for $125 bucks, at this point I have a small collection of switches. I figure with this switch I can run WAN @ 2.5Gb Lan at 2.5Gb and my Win 11 Gamming PC's at 2.5Gb with a few stragglers still at 1Gb. Then if I run into more issues I can use the command you gave me before to max out the buffers.
I am going to try this MTU thing here in a sec, curious to what happens.
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@stephenw10 Do you actually have Cable Internet? Or lucky enough to have standard AT&T Fiber ethernet?
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@ngr2001 said in Mixing different NIC Speeds (1Gb & 10Gb) Performance Problem Question:
The issue with my old 3650 was that it only had 2x 10Gb ports, with the 3850 having 12x I am thinking this may be my best path forward.
That is why I recommended that to you in the first place. The larger buffers don't completely resolve the issue, but makes it a lot better:
sudo ethtool enp110s0 | grep Speed Speed: 1000Mb/sspeedtest -s 1783 Speedtest by Ookla Server: Comcast - San Francisco, CA (id: 1783) ISP: Comcast Cable Idle Latency: 13.45 ms (jitter: 1.66ms, low: 10.66ms, high: 14.05ms) Download: 827.00 Mbps (data used: 743.6 MB) 16.85 ms (jitter: 10.94ms, low: 8.75ms, high: 273.13ms) Upload: 353.04 Mbps (data used: 384.2 MB) 16.75 ms (jitter: 1.10ms, low: 12.49ms, high: 35.54ms) Packet Loss: Not available. -
An interesting datapoint that makes me point the finger to DOCSIS is that I have a secondary WAN connection through Sail Internet. If I force the traffic for this 1GbE client through my WAN2 with a rule--it reaches 940/940Mbps
speedtest Speedtest by Ookla Server: Sail Internet - Santa Clara, CA (id: 56367) ISP: Sail Internet Idle Latency: 1.34 ms (jitter: 0.06ms, low: 1.14ms, high: 1.38ms) Download: 937.62 Mbps (data used: 423.4 MB) 34.14 ms (jitter: 7.94ms, low: 0.81ms, high: 289.02ms) Upload: 938.43 Mbps (data used: 422.4 MB) 142.21 ms (jitter: 75.57ms, low: 0.90ms, high: 825.07ms) Packet Loss: 0.0% -
@ngr2001 said in Mixing different NIC Speeds (1Gb & 10Gb) Performance Problem Question:
I am going to try this MTU thing here in a sec, curious to what happens.
Doesn't do anything. I already tried everything on the pfSense that I could think of:
- Disable Hardware Checksum Offloading
- Changing the State Type from Keep to Loose
- Setting MSS & MTUs to 1420
- Disabling pf Scrub
The only solution that I don't like (which is not supported on the Cisco) is Ethernet Flow Control on both the WAN and LAN interfaces of the pfSense. Again a very ugly blunt solution that pauses the entire interface impacting other clients on your network.
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@lnguyen said in Mixing different NIC Speeds (1Gb & 10Gb) Performance Problem Question:
@stephenw10 Do you actually have Cable Internet? Or lucky enough to have standard AT&T Fiber ethernet?
I don't have either. I'm not in the US.
That is interesting that adding the switch would make any difference to a docsis issue though. Hard to see how that could happen.
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I just noticed something odd, when I moved the PF LAN nic from 1Gb to 10Gb the GUI is no longer showing Flow Control being enabled. I would expect to see rxpause & txpause.
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What NIC is it? Not all drivers report it so it can be displayed there.
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@stephenw10 Using a switch with larger buffers only mask the symptoms of broken TCP Flow Control. This isn't a pfSense issue. It's a DOCSIS issue when the WAN speed is greater than a LAN client, ergo 2.35Gbps WAN to 940Mbps LAN
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My LAN MTU is now 1460 in PF, so far no change is certain speedtests like fast.com when PF lan @ 10Gb. Speeds still slowly tapering down to 500Mbps. However with MTU at 1460 and PF Lan at 1Gb performance is still solid.
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@ngr2001 Yes what NIC are you using on the pfSense?
