Openvpn bsdcrypto acceleration

stephenw10

You should be able to get at least 50Mpbs of VPN from that Atom board, probably more. Without anything else running at least. See this post:

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,27780

Steve

newbieuser1234

Thanks. I wonder why mine is so slow. I have glxsb or whatever checked and the option for bsdcryptoengine is selected in the openvpn server settings.

stephenw10

Glxsb won't help you on an Atom, it's a Geode specific hardware driver.
Are you actually seeing very bad vpn throughput or just bad results from open SSL speed?

Steve

newbieuser1234

no complaints, just the speed test for openssl. both of the ones i test are running a magnetic hd, would a cf card unit return a faster speed?

stephenw10

It shouldn't make any difference to either real vpn throughput or open-ssl speed results.

Steve

newbieuser1234

I don't see the geode recognized in the dmesg output: Do i need to have 64 bit? This is weird.

cryptosoft0: <software crypto="">on motherboard
padlock0: No ACE support.

there is no entry for glsxb either as noted in this post:

"Boards utilizing the AMD Geode platform typically have the "AMD Geode LX Security Block" which supports certain encryption types. It will show up in dmesg as the glxsb device:" glxsb0: <amd geode="" lx="" security="" block="" (aes-128-cbc,="" rng)="">mem 0xefff4000-0xefff7fff irq 9 at device 1.2 on pci0
http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Are_cryptographic_accelerators_supported</amd></software>

stephenw10

This is on your Atom box yes? Then that's expected, there's no hardware crypto.

Steve

newbieuser1234

So essentially the dual core is slower for openvpn than an Alix 2d3 with a vpn1411 accelerator ?

stephenw10

Well I would say no because of Databeestje's test report on the D510. He was seeing >50Mbps VPN traffic in one direction. The Alix can't manage that even with the Hifn accelerator.

You haven't posted a complete output from openssl speed yet. That might show something.
Coincidentally I have been playing around with an old firebox testing it's Safenet crypto card this evening. I've found some interesting things. Here's some output for comparrison:

Without the Safenet 1141.

[2.0.3-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root(1): openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc

Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 4443103 aes-128-cbc's in 2.89s
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 1258138 aes-128-cbc's in 2.91s
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 318359 aes-128-cbc's in 2.87s
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 80907 aes-128-cbc's in 2.89s
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 10450 aes-128-cbc's in 2.98s
OpenSSL 0.9.8y 5 Feb 2013
built on: date not available
options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(idx,int) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(idx) 
compiler: cc
available timing options: USE_TOD HZ=128 [sysconf value]
timing function used: getrusage
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type             16 bytes     64 bytes    256 bytes   1024 bytes   8192 bytes
aes-128-cbc      24627.37k    27709.88k    28411.35k    28646.12k    28707.23k

With the card:

[2.0.3-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root(13): openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc

Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 117285 aes-128-cbc's in 0.14s
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 110095 aes-128-cbc's in 0.05s
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 93032 aes-128-cbc's in 0.04s
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 56316 aes-128-cbc's in 0.05s
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 8643 aes-128-cbc's in 0.00s
OpenSSL 0.9.8y 5 Feb 2013
built on: date not available
options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(idx,int) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(idx) 
compiler: cc
available timing options: USE_TOD HZ=128 [sysconf value]
timing function used: getrusage
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type             16 bytes     64 bytes    256 bytes   1024 bytes   8192 bytes
aes-128-cbc      13690.32k   156398.83k   538937.61k  1147202.67k 70803456.00k

The numbers make it look as though the card speeds things up massively but in reality my testing has showed that the box performs better, for OpenVPN at least, without the card in it. Moreover the card has to actually be removed from the box. No amount of selecting 'no hardware encryption' had any effect, which is how the OCF is supposed to work as I understand it. The wiki page exaplins this somewhat by saying that in reality VPN traffic is small blocks of data so the really big numbers are not any help.

Steve

newbieuser1234

$ openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc
OpenSSL 0.9.8y 5 Feb 2013
built on: date not available
options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(idx,int) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(idx)
compiler: cc
available timing options: USE_TOD HZ=128 [sysconf value]
timing function used: getrusage
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-128-cbc 20742.63k 22943.08k 23652.34k 23832.40k 23883.13k

I get 7Mb on a 1gz, 1 gb of ram via neoware box. smokes my dual core…

$ openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc
OpenSSL 0.9.8y 5 Feb 2013
built on: date not available
options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(idx,int) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(idx)
compiler: cc
available timing options: USE_TOD HZ=128 [sysconf value]
timing function used: getrusage
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-128-cbc 38135.72k 190433.15k 884307.27k 2274631.30k 4013679.73k

$ openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc -engine via
OpenSSL 0.9.8y 5 Feb 2013
built on: date not available
options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(idx,int) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(idx)
compiler: cc
available timing options: USE_TOD HZ=128 [sysconf value]
timing function used: getrusage
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-128-cbc 46147.44k 189884.01k 676914.89k 3349549.48k 6945314.10k

Any way to test actual throughput? iperf?

stephenw10

It should do the Via probably has the Padlock encryption engine built in. But like I say above numbers aren't everything. ;)

Steve

newbieuser1234

How are you testing throughput?

stephenw10

A ridiculous long chain of machines! :D
An OpenVPN connection between two machines, the box I'm testing and one that's much more powerful to guarantee it's not slowing things down. I establish the VPN and then run iperf using the powerful end as the server and a laptop behind the test box as a client.
I saw ~25Mbps with various encryption types with the card but ~33Mbps once I removed it.

Steve

newbieuser1234

two machines on the same router, but different interfaces?

stephenw10

Yes as it happens they are connected via separate interfaces on my home router. They could just as easily have been connected directly though.

Steve

newbieuser1234

Thanks for the info. I'll try it out and see what results I get. What setup do you like for the best bang for your buck for SMB users. 10 or less users.

newbieuser1234

I did your test with openvpn and iperf on seperate interfaces. I got around 70 Mbits/sec. Far better than what the openssl test showed. weird stuff. thanks for your help. Both the server and client were running in VM's so that may have slowed it down a bit too, not sure. I will try with standalone machines next.

stephenw10

Ah well there you go. :)
About twice as fast as my Pentium 3 era Celeron 1200.
I was running 'top' on the console of the test box to make sure it was running at 100%, it could not pass more traffic. Also I tested the connection outside the VPN to make sure I wasn't being restricted by something else in the route. However if that's possible you have top be sure that the test traffic is actually using the VPN! ;) I did that by using the WAN interface on the remote box to test the route and the LAN to test the VPN. The LAN address is only accessible over the VPN.

Steve

newbieuser1234

ill try the lan/wan test next. I tried it where I had the client and server on different lan interfaces that couldn't talk to each other except for vpn. when i disconnected the vpn, and tried without it on the same lan, i got 250Mb. Is that normal for a gig interface? maybe the VM was limiting it some? They were on the same switch.

stephenw10

I would expect more from an Atom with Gigabit interfaces. Something >500Mbps.
It's not clear exactly how you had the test setup connected. If that's between two VMs connected to the same switch I would expect near Gigabit results, the traffic would not be going through the pfSense box at all.

It's very easy to overlook something and end up testing the wrong thing in these sorts of test.

Steve