upgraded from SG-2220 to 4200 Max and Internet performance is extremely improved... why?
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I have been using the Netgate SG-2220 since 2017 and have been extremely happy. I just upgraded to 1100Mbps Internet speeds and I noticed I was only getting around 800Mbps due to the CPU saturating under the high traffic load. So I upgraded to the 4200 Max and as expected I am now saturating my 1Gbps LAN (I'm going to replace the switch with a 2.5GBE). But what has me the most impressed is loading webpages and other things that are kinda chatty just snap open. Like bloody SNAP open. And doing my account sync in Quicken used to be painfully slow. I just blamed Quicken having a crappy design that doesn't scale with decades of history and 40+ accounts. After upgrading to the 4200 Max it is done in seconds rather than minutes.
This isn't just transfer speed because I was getting 800Mbps with the older Netgate. It is something else. Like maybe DNS resolver is faster due to the faster CPU and RAM?
I'm curious what the thinking is for why things are so much snappier but OMG do I love it.
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@scottlindner The max has an SSD and the 2200 is probably eMMC so the disk speed is dramatically higher. Also pfSense updates will be much faster.
As far as Quicken that seems odd but if I remember I’ll check my 2100 CPU usage at home with it. DNS should take very little CPU.
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@SteveITS said in upgraded from SG-2220 to 4200 Max and Internet performance is extremely improved... why?:
@scottlindner The max has an SSD and the 2200 is probably eMMC so the disk speed is dramatically higher. Also pfSense updates will be much faster.
As far as Quicken that seems odd but if I remember I’ll check my 2100 CPU usage at home with it. DNS should take very little CPU.
I upgraded my SG-2220 disc to an NVMe a while ago so I doubt it is disk speeds. Appreciate you checking what is up.
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Disk speed would only make much difference if you're proxying/caching a lot on the firewall. Which you probably aren't.
But when it's running at the limits of the CPU everything is getting queued. Other services, like DNS, will be slower to respond. It cannot prioritise anything unless it's already dropping/queing at some lower bandwidth.
Glad you like the 4200!
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@scottlindner That sounds very much like a DNS issue/problem that has been fixed by the reinstall/upgrade to a new box.
Are you running pfBlockerNG in your setup? I have a couple of times had my builtin DNS resolver start acting funny with very slow resolves on some sites and such. Removing and completely reinstalling pfBlockerNG has fixed it - not sure why though…
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Sounds more like a DNS not problem.
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@SteveITS said in upgraded from SG-2220 to 4200 Max and Internet performance is extremely improved... why?:
I’ll check my 2100 CPU usage at home with it. DNS should take very little CPU
So FWIW I pulled up "top" and ran an update. Anecdotally I don't see any more CPU usage than after the update finishes. Unbound was usually under 1% WCPU, mostly under 0.5%, but occasional peaks above that up to 15%. However it showed the same after closing Quicken, up to 18%.
I was curious just because Quicken updates are notoriously slow, at least here. Obviously it depends on how many accounts are updating, also.
A couple years back my driver to finally replace a really old PC was that a new version of Turbotax (originally, same company) took like 30 seconds to save each change. Quicken got a lot faster too but I'd still not call it fast. I don't think the big guys bother to optimize code anymore...<sniff>
The 4200 is definitely a big step up.
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@stephenw10 said in upgraded from SG-2220 to 4200 Max and Internet performance is extremely improved... why?:
Disk speed would only make much difference if you're proxying/caching a lot on the firewall. Which you probably aren't.
But when it's running at the limits of the CPU everything is getting queued. Other services, like DNS, will be slower to respond. It cannot prioritise anything unless it's already dropping/queing at some lower bandwidth.
That's it! It is that the CPU is just bogged down because my Internet has grown to rates that the CPU load (or maybe just bus/RAM load) is taking longer to respond. Not because it's maxed out, but because it's just highly loaded.
Glad you like the 4200!
Yah. I wish I had done this a while ago now. I can't believe how snappy things are.
