pfSense on Proxmox - 500mbps on 1G line

bits

New Member
Jul 31, 2018
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Hi,

I'm new to proxmox, but am a long time pfSense user on a small bare metal Atom server. Since getting gigabit home service (via ATT), I've chosen to run pfSense on Proxmox, and have migrated to a Dell R210 ii (Xeon). The goal was to achieve full 1gbps speed and also to open up a playground of VMs for other projects.

I followed the netgate guide exactly (cant link, am a new user), and aside from a couple small hiccups (en1 vs eth1), things are working. The only issue that I have is that I'm not able to max out my 1g connection. I've seen as high as ~700 down and ~500 up, but usually see ~550 each way. When under load, the CPU is at ~30-40% utilization, so I am confident it is not a CPU bottleneck issue. From the speedtest on the ATT Box, I have only seen >~900 in each direction. I'm wondering if others have run into this issue and have suggestions before I give this a test on bare metal to see what happens. My config is exactly as is prescribed in the netgate guide (virtio, kvm64), with 4 Xeon cores allotted to pfSense, and 8GB RAM.

Apologies if I've missed a thread on this topic, I assure you it is not for lack of trying. :)

Thanks!
 
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give open-v-switch a go. I did confirm that the MTU is 1500 on the ATT router/modem.

Thanks again!
 
Not sure if this is relevant, but unlike Linux, BSD-based OS use 1 core/cpu for routing.
Check this throughput-test: on the same hardware IPFire (Linux) si always faster, than pfSense (BSD)...
 
Performance is always dependent on hardware so if your nics are not quality hardware you will never be able to saturate a Gb uplink. Quality hardware does not include Realtek.
 

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