City Fibre UK - WAN Performance on this system.

zoqask

I'm going to be vague sorry, not a good introduction but this area is not my forte.

I have an eero box that came with the city fibre (UK) it gives me a gb up and down. I am currently using the eero as a wan for pfsense so I get about 640mb down and for some reason nearly a full gb up.

If take the eero out of the equation and just use the pppoe connection using vlan 911 the speed is awful. I'm only getting ~475 Mbps down / ~270 Mbps up on ookla.

Does anyone have an idea why such low performance?. I have Use if_pppoe kernel module for PPPoE client enabled.

So to break this down

Direct pfSense PPPoE over VLAN 911 gives poor throughput compared with using an eero in front as the PPPoE router. Same ONT and same line. Looking for advice on whether this AMD GX-412TC box is likely too weak for gigabit-ish PPPoE, or whether there are pfSense/FreeBSD tuning options worth trying. Or has anyone had to tune or tweak for City Fibre?

Some system specs.

pfSense / FreeBSD:
2.8.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT amd64

CPU:
AMD GX-412TC SOC
4 cores
Current freq: 1000 MHz
Freq levels: 1000/924 800/760 600/571

Memory:
~4 GB

NICs:
4x Intel I211 Gigabit Network Connection
Interfaces: igb0, igb1, igb2, igb3

WAN setup:
CityFibre / PPPoE over VLAN 911
Physical WAN: igb1
VLAN interface: igb1.911
PPPoE interface: pppoe2

WAN physical link:
igb1 mtu 1500
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
status: active

VLAN:
igb1.911 mtu 1500
vlan: 911 parent interface: igb1
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
status: active

PPPoE:
pppoe2 mtu 1492
groups: pppoec

Relevant sysctls:
net.isr.dispatch: direct
net.inet.tcp.tso: 0

patient0

@zoqask where are you running the speedtest, on pfSense or on a client? On a client is the recommended setup because if you run it on pfSense, resources will go into running the speedtest and lower the system performance.

What additional services are you running on pfSense?
Does enable or disable the if_pppoe setting make a difference?

The CPU is the same as in the PCEngines APU2/APU3/APU4 and I think you'll find results about it and PPPoE on this forum and the internet. One here to read through: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/95148

I remember that 400/400 was about the max before the if_pppoe driver. Not sure what the max is now with if_pppoe enabled.

stephenw10

@zoqask said in City Fibre UK - WAN Performance on this system.:

AMD GX-412TC

That CPU just isn't fast enough. It's probably also the limiting factor in the download speeds without PPPoE.

The C3558 will pass 1Gbps with PPPoE for example but it's a lot more powerful:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/5050vs3129vs611vs1668/AMD-GX-412TC-SOC-vs-Intel-Atom-C3558-vs-Intel-Atom-D525-vs-Intel-Core2-Duo-E6700

zoqask

@stephenw10 ok understood. I will just keep with the eero box as wan.

Not wishing to shell out for a home box just to get the wan performance. I had a suspicion this embedded box was pushing it so I guess that's the answer.

Many thanks all and noted.