Netcomm NF18 much faster than Pfsense router

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stiffwin

46 posts

Geek

#272652 8-Jul-2020 08:23

Hi all - I recently switched to Orcon Gigantic fibre, and I would like to keep my Pfsense router in the loop if possible, but I can only achieve 10% of the speed I can get via the Orcon-supplied modem. I am using the same cables for the speedtests which are performed using the desktop app. I presume it is a setting I haven't got right, but I have spent 10 hours trying different settings without success. I would be very grateful if someone could look at the attached pics and hopefully point me in the right direction.

Cheers

Steve

Edit: I mistakenly assumed the image captions would show up - the second speedtest is obviously the Pfsense router. Please let me know if any other pics or info is required

SirHumphreyAppleby

1338 posts

Uber Geek

#2518894 8-Jul-2020 08:29

MTU should be 1500 as you're not using PPPoE. In terms of hardware (CPU and network interfaces), it's more than fast enough for the job. I'm not having any trouble getting >800Mbs^-1 even with PPPoE on an i7.

stiffwin

46 posts

Geek

#2518899 8-Jul-2020 08:35

I have tried 1500 with no apparent difference. You say it's fast enough - are you referring to the second (Pfsense) speedtest? It's only 10% of the Netcomm modem's speed.

SirHumphreyAppleby

1338 posts

Uber Geek

#2518918 8-Jul-2020 08:49

stiffwin:

I have tried 1500 with no apparent difference. You say it's fast enough - are you referring to the second (Pfsense) speedtest? It's only 10% of the Netcomm modem's speed.

No, I'm saying the hardware is fast enough and it should be able to provide throughput close to that of the Netcomm.

You would struggle a bit with PPPoE due to the core speed of the CPU, but even then the numbers should be a lot higher than what you're seeing.

The only other thing I can think of is disabling hardware checksum offloading and/or hardware TCP segmentation offloading in System / Advanced / Networking. I have the latter disabled on my box, although I'm not sure if that is necessary (Intel em driver in my case).

stiffwin

46 posts

Geek

#2518945 8-Jul-2020 08:58

Thanks for that - I'll try your suggestion.

Is it significant that the WAN_DHCP gateway is offline (see the Status/Dashboard image)?

SirHumphreyAppleby

1338 posts

Uber Geek

#2518958 8-Jul-2020 09:16

stiffwin:

Is it significant that the WAN_DHCP gateway is offline (see the Status/Dashboard image)?

Not necessarily, no. https://forum.netgate.com/topic/94460/one-dpinger-gateway-status-offline/16

I use PPPoE and pfSense doesn't show the gateway so I'm not sure if the defaults have changed in later versions. If it's causing problems, you can change the host to ping or disable the check so pfSense always assumes the connection is up.