'router on a stick' VF fibre

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › 'router on a stick' VF fibre

grasshoper

164 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 6

#285720 13-May-2021 10:24

Since Vodafone are kind enough to put the WAN traffic on vlan10, I can plug the ONT directly into the switch and use the pfsense box for routing. (lan traffic on vlan20, wan traffic on vlan10). It works, but I guess the NIC is not powerful enough as I get a significant amount of packet loss.

Is it a bad idea to set up my home network this way? If not, any suggestions for a decent NIC that doesnt cost the earth that I can plug into a somewhat modern server running pfsense ?

Spyware

3818 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1366

Lifetime subscriber

#2706885 13-May-2021 10:38

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe

Spark Max Fibre using Mikrotik CCR1009-8G-1S-1S+, CRS125-24G-1S, Unifi UAP, U6-Pro, UAP-AC-M-Pro, Apple TV 4K (2022), Apple TV 4K (2017), iPad Air 1st gen, iPad Air 4th gen, iPhone 13, SkyNZ3151 (the white box). If it doesn't move then it's data cabled.

fe31nz

1294 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 423

#2707239 13-May-2021 23:27

Routing gigabit traffic at full speed takes quite a bit of CPU - that is likely where the problem is, not the NIC. The NIC can help by offloading the checksumming and using DMA for the data transfers, but you are still going to be up against it to do routing fast enough. This is why routers normally have specially designed hardware that they offload the bulk of the routing function to - CPUs just can not keep up. The first thing to try is to turn off everything except the basic routing functions - definitely no QoS for example. Just NAT and firewall. Does pfsense provide packet drop counters? Can you see where the packets are getting dropped? What is the CPU usage like? Is pfsense able to spread the load over multiple cores, or does it need to mostly use only one core?