Performance Issue: pfSense meets DOCSIS 3.0
-
So, I recently upgraded my DOCSIS 3.0 cable connection to a "up to 200/10 Mbps down/up" connection. Now it seems my pfSense box can't handle it. Bypassing the pfSense box I get 165/8.5 Mbps, which is pretty close to advertised speeds.
With the pfSense box it is another story. First I was getting a 75/4.5 Mbps and I figured it was because of the old, cruddy 3Com NICs I had. So I went out and purchased two Intel PRO/1000 GT cards. Now I'm getting 110/4.5 Mbps. Better, but still nowhere near what I'm getting when bypasssing the pfSense box. I'm just using it as a router/firewall, not running any extra packages. During the speedtest the CPU usage doesn't hit 10%.
The machine is:
Athlon XP something underclocked to ~1.1GHz
ASUS M7V266
2 GB 266MHz DDR2 -
My DOCSIS3.0 is only setup for 50/5 right now and my pfsense atom box has no issues with that speed. You did the right thing by upgrading to gbit cards as 100/10 wont cut it. What slot type is your card? I'm wondering if your motherboard bus can't keep up.. Is there a way for you to boot your pfsense box using a live Linux cd and run a speedtest? This way you can make sure your hardware can handle it. If your provider has its own speedtest website(TWC does for all their locations) Use that first then a speedtest site that is the close to your location.
-
I am using my providers speedtest. Speedtest.net is not reliable above 50 Mbps. I'll see about whipping up a Linux Live CD.
-
Why underclock the CPU? Let it run full speed, you may be hitting a bottleneck there trying to push 200.
Watch the output of "top -SH" while running the speed test, see what it shows.
-
Doesn't seem to be overloading the CPU.
$ top -SH last pid: 56291; load averages: 0.10, 0.07, 0.02 up 3+01:57:28 23:03:13 82 processes: 2 running, 65 sleeping, 2 zombie, 13 waiting Mem: 53M Active, 19M Inact, 30M Wired, 524K Cache, 18M Buf, 387M Free Swap: 1024M Total, 1024M Free PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU COMMAND 11 root 171 ki31 0K 8K RUN 72.6H 71.09% idle: cpu0 33 root -68 - 0K 8K - 8:29 12.99% em1 taskq 32 root -68 - 0K 8K - 7:17 9.18% em0 taskq 27 root -68 - 0K 8K WAIT 0:54 1.27% irq4: em0 uhci0+ 48459 root -8 0 40712K 13980K piperd 0:12 1.17% php 755 root 4 0 6168K 4188K kqread 0:52 0.49% lighttpd 12 root -32 - 0K 8K WAIT 7:39 0.00% swi4: clock sio 1485 root 8 20 3492K 1816K wait 1:42 0.00% sh 15 root 44 - 0K 8K - 0:59 0.00% yarrow 428 root 44 0 3268K 1120K select 0:42 0.00% syslogd 441 root -58 0 10836K 8000K bpf 0:29 0.00% tcpdump 443 root -8 0 3156K 768K piperd 0:26 0.00% logger 45 root 20 - 0K 8K syncer 0:17 0.00% syncer 5 root -8 - 0K 8K - 0:17 0.00% g_down 4 root -8 - 0K 8K - 0:16 0.00% g_up 770 root 4 0 45832K 19212K accept 0:12 0.00% php 759 root 4 0 45832K 19212K accept 0:12 0.00% php 20 root 8 - 0K 8K - 0:12 0.00% thread taskqThe reason the CPU is underclocked is so that I can undervolt the fan without overheating issues to keep things quiet.
-
I'm getting very simliar results on my docsis 3 connection, and I have 2 of them. I wasn't going to post anything until further testing tomorrow, but after seeing your post I wanted to say that I'm having similar issues. I plan to do further testing on a basic system tomorrow. I'm running a quad core 2.4 with 4GB's on one system and 8GB's on the other. My systems have Intel Pro Nics as well, but I was thinking my vlans and the way I trunk my internet connections was/is playing a part in the speed.
Thanks,
Andy
-
Weird thing is the upload stays @ 4,5Mbit while the download speed increases, when you swap the NIC.
Is this a fresh install/config? Or could you test a fresh install/config?
Your CPU/NIC/Board should be able to handle this just fine.
-
This might sound obvious to some but have you made sure you have turned off:
-Squid Transparent mode
-Traffic shaping
-Snort
-Hardware check suming offBoot off LIVE CD like others have said and do your test with a generic setup. Or boot off a Knoppix CD of Win XP PE disc and bench with your isp's site.
My 2 cents. -
Have you tried reducing your MTU size a little? Some ISPs that have moved to DOCSIS 3.0 use GRE tunnels between the modem and node. Maybe a setting of 1492 or 1424 would do well.
-
Which version of pfsense are you running? There have been issues with the em driver in the 2.0 snapshots.
