Upload Speed issue

[TheJM]

Hey all! Thank you for this wonderful resource for newbies like me to reference. I have searched and searched and cannot find the solution to my issue.

I am running Proxmox 5.4.3 at the moment and am having an issue with the upload and download speed of my VMs. I will try to provide as much information as possible here. I am very new to the vm/server world but am learning quickly so please let me know if you need any more info.

Some Facts:

• My home internet speed is symmetrical gig.
• Speed tests from other wired computers on the network usually yeild 1ms ping, ~900Mbps up and down.
• after installing speedtest-cli on proxmox and running a test, i get 808-down 196-up.
• I have 3 VMs, all are 18.04 server.
  
• I installed speedtest-cli on all the VMs too.
• Running a test on each VM yeilds the ~320-down 4.13-up (all vms are about the same results)

To try and troubleshoot i installed a vm with 16.04 server and got ~320-down ~83-up. This is still far from what my Proxmox host is getting and even farther from my internet speed but it is an improvement over 18.04.

I have also changed the Network Device 'Model' in the VM configuration in proxmox to all 4 options and they each yeilded the same testing results shown above. I also changed the CPU type to host and that had no effect.

I have a few questions as you can imagine:
1. Most importantly why are my VM upload speeds so limited? It seems there is an issue with how 18.04 interacts with Proxmox?
2. Why is my Proxmox host speedtest not similar to other computers on the network and similar to my internet speed?

For reference my home network is simple. Everything is connected to a 24 port switch and then to the modem. No VLANs or other complexities. My Proxmox server has a gigabit intel NIC and is wired to the switch.

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks
JM

 

[wolfgang]

Hi,

I guess it is a NIC driver problem. What type of NIC do you use?

 

[TheJM]

Hi,

I guess it is a NIC driver problem. What type of NIC do you use?

Thank you for your reply!

I am using the ASUS C246 pro motherboard and in looking at the manual it says it has 2 intel NICs:
1 x Intel® I210-AT GbE LAN
1 x Intel® I219-LM GbE LAN

 

[wolfgang]

Did you test both nic? the I210-AT should work without a problem.
The I219-LM I have no experience with the e1000e driver.

 

[TheJM]

Did you test both nic? the I210-AT should work without a problem.
The I219-LM I have no experience with the e1000e driver.

I am away from the server for a few days. I will connect the server to the other port and report back with the results.

When I do that should I use the E-1000 drivers for the VMs? Also, when I originally installed Proxmox, I didn't manually load any additional ethernet drivers for the host. Do I need to install anything extra?

I am new at this and your help is greatly appreciated.

 

[wolfgang]

When I do that should I use the E-1000 drivers for the VMs?

No this is software emulated nic and there you get max 50-70 MBit.

Do I need to install anything extra?

No, they are included in the kernel.
The E1000E is not that common in Enterprise environments.

 

[TheJM]

No this is software emulated nic and there you get max 50-70 MBit.

No, they are included in the kernel.
The E1000E is not that common in Enterprise environments.

I am back at the server and have switched the Ethernet port the cable is plugged into. In doing so I also changed the port connected with vmbr0 to the new port and restarted the server.

Unfortunately I got the same results as posted above.

 

[TheJM]

Looks like I am having the exact same issue as this guy:

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/odd-network-behavior-on-vms-and-cts.54007/

 

[HologramX]

Same issue.. after some test ON SAME SERVER (DELL R610) AND SAME LXC CONTAINER.. simple changing template , this was result:
ALL S.O. other than ubuntu have no issue
ALL ubuntu before and after 18 have no issue
ALL ubuntu 18.X.X have same issue.. Download perfect.. UPLOAD limited: < 5Mbit..
IF SOMEONE of proxmox team have an answer will be appreciated.

 

[TheJM]

Not really an update but I thought I'd share anyway.

I borrowed a PCIE dual Intel NIC card from my bother and installed it in the server. After getting everything connected up, creating another virtual bridge, assigning a VM to that bridge, etc. The tests on the VM were the same: ~300Mbps down and 4.13Mbps up. This was on one of my 18.04 VMs.

I also did the test on the 16.04 VMs and got the same result as it previously got: ~300Mbps down and ~80Mbps up.

 

[TheJM]

Okay, one more update.

I installed 18.04 server bare metal on a Dell Optiplex 3020 mini desktop that I had lying around. This machine is completely separate from my Proxmox installation (Proxmox runs on a separate custom built server). Upon installing speediest-cli, I got the same results as my VMs were getting ~300Mbps down and 4.07Mbps up. This dell has a wired connection to the main network switch.

That tells us that the very low speeds were getting on our 18.04 installs are a ubuntu issue not necessarily a proxmox issue.

But it still doesn't answer the question of why my proxmox host is only getting ~200Mbps up when it should be getting about 900.

 

[TheJM]

One more thing...

I installed Ubuntu 18.04 desktop on that dell mini desktop computer I mentioned in the previous post. I downloaded and ran Speedtest-cli via terminal and got the same results as above: ~300Mbps down and ~4.1Mbps up.

But then I went to speedtest.net and ran a test there and it came out normal! I forget the exact numbers but they were about 400Mbps down and 700Mbps up maybe. Great news! So it sounds like there is an incompatibility between the speediest-cli utility and ubuntu 18.04.

Back to the proxmox server...I went to one of my 18.04 server VMs that serves as an NVR and stores and serves up security camera footage. I downloaded a video from there and calculated the speed. This means that the VM was uploading the video to the internet and to the device I'm downloading the video on (videos are not stored on the cloud for those of you wondering, videos have to come from that VM.). The video downloaded very quickly, I calculated it was downloading at about 200Mbps. This is obviously far faster than the 4Mbps that speediest-cli was showing

 

[wolfgang]

I can't reproduce here on any intel nic with actual Proxmox VE and Ubuntu VM.

 

[TheJM]

I can't reproduce here on any intel nic with actual Proxmox VE and Ubuntu VM.

Thank you for trying to reproduce it. I appreciate the support.

I originally started this thread because my security camera NVR VM seemed to be taking a long time to load videos and was intermittent at doing so so I downloaded speediest-cli to do an internet speed test on the vm, which showed the upload speed was very low. After going through the steps in the above posts and doing some file transfers over the network from my VMs to other computers on the network, speeds are coming back normal. I was getting near gigabit speeds transferring files over the network to and from the VMs

In conclusion...
Seems like the issue with the videos loading slowly is an issue with the NVR software and not with the VM or Proxmox. This also tells me that there is probably a bug or an incompatibility between the speedtest-cli utility and ubuntu 18.04 server and desktop.

As I said in the OP, I am new to this and have never run into an issue like this to know how to troubleshoot it. I appreciate the support and will switch over to trying to troubleshoot my NVR software, not Proxmox and the VMs.

JM