Hardware offloading network, performance?

[ott]

I have pfSense running and as a VM with the usual setup: vmbr0 -> vLAN and vmbr1 -> vWAN . One of the steps of setting up pfSense when using VirtIO interfaces in Proxmox VE i to disable hardware checksums. I also crave more physical NICs, so... It got me thinking. How does passthrough pcie network cards to pfSense compare to the virtual bridges and nics in proxmos with regards to performance?

My current setup, in a very non-scientific test, use <1% CPU when network is "idle", and peaks at 14-15% at 500 Mbps traffic.

 

[shrdlicka]

Hi,
PCIe passthrough should help you in regard to performance. Some people also do this to isolate the WAN further from the rest of the machine.