Traffic limiter tx works, rx doesn't.

hdezela

I'm trying to do traffic limiting but I can't get it to work. I've gone through all the forum threads and tried a bunch of things but I just can't get it.

My setup is as follows:

bge0 -> WAN / no IP
bge1 -> LAN / no IP
BRIDGE0 -> WAN+LAN bridge / static IP + gateway (GW_OPT3)

Without any rules set up, users can access anything, so the bridge is working.

I've set up two limiters (tx.jpg + rx.jpg), one for TX and one for RX.

When configuring rules, I tried the two options I found on the forum:

setup1:
WAN rule + destination = alias + IN = rx
LAN rule + source = alias + IN = tx
In this setup, the tx (upload) filter works fine, but the rx (download) filter doesn't work

setup2:
LAN rule + source = alias + IN = tx + OUT = rx
In this setup, DNS and ping work but browsing or downloading doesn't work, everything either times out or gives "unspecified network error"

Any idea what I'm doing wrong here?

tx.jpg_thumb

rx.jpg_thumb

setup1.jpg_thumb

setup2.jpg_thumb

Harvy66

I've never sued limiters, but your RX limiter groups on the sender, which is a near infinite number of services. This means a device on your network can pull down 5Mb/s from each service independently. 5Mb from Google, 5Mb from Youtube, 5Mb from Netflix. That's 15Mb right there. You probably want destination for the RX.

Derelict

https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/3824

??

hdezela

@Harvy66, with that change I was able to get it to work, but geologically slow.

There's one subnet that needs 100mbps and they're tech guys, so they did some digging before calling me. They said they were getting an average of 12.5mbps and asked me if maybe I mixed up bit/byte somewhere since the 8x multiplier looked suspicious.

That got me thinking so I started playing around with the RX limiter, these are my results:

5120 Kbit/s = timeout
6144 Kbit/s = timeout
7168 Kbit/s = timeout
8192 Kbit/s = timeout
10240 Kbit/s = timeout
15360 Kbit/s = ~950kbps / 50% drop rate
20480 Kbit/s = ~1.1mbps / 30% drop rate
25600 Kbit/s = ~1.5mbps / 5% drop rate
30720 Kbit/s = ~1.5mbps
40960 Kbit/s = ~2.4mbps
51200 Kbit/s = ~2.9mbps

…so there is something very wonky with traffic limiters. I guess I'm gonna have to go learn the queues thing to limit traffic.

kegobeer

I don't know if you've seen this guide on fixed vs. flexible limiters, but this is the one I used.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/3e67dk/flexible_vs_fixed_limiters_troubleshooting_with/

I found the flexible limiter works best for my environment, and I verified the up and down limits were working by using speedtest.net.