Hello all first time pfsense user im having issues with slow speed. when i have my edge router connected i get close to my advertised speeds of 600MB down 20MB up. speedtest are around 450ish down and 15+ MB ups. I removed the edge router and install the pfsense box which is an old computer being repurposed. The computer has an 10/100/1,000 MBit/s Intel I219LM on board(WAN) and im using two usb 3.1 to ethernet dongle(LAN, LAN2) that are gigabit. i have tested the dongles with the edge router to a computer and they do get close to the advertised speeds. the two dongles are attached to different LANs( LAN, LAN2) LAN goes to a tp-link switch and LAN2 goes to a Ubiquiti UAP 6 LR. when connected to the PFsense box i’m getting speeds between 62MB-90MB up and 2MB-10MB upload on both LAN and LAN2. It is a fresh install and pretty much default setup. I already tried the filtering from the video on here and that hasn’t worked. Any suggestion on what it could be? there are no VPN which is why i’m trying to get close to my advertised speeds since i want to set up PiA on the box.
Update. i reinstalled pfsense on my machine and still slow getting 90MB down.
system specs
Intel(R) Core™ i5-7500T CPU @ 2.70GHz
16GB RAM
onBoard NIC Intel I219LM
128GB NVME bootDrive
0
Dongle’s may work, but are not likely to work well with pfsense and are often the cause of issues. Get a computer with an Intel based network card and it’s likely to work much better.
I’ve been down this path and the USB just doesn’t work reliably! You get lots of packet loss, and over heating. Make sure to turn off any of the offloading features, I haven’t seen a USB that allows offloading any of the overhead. Then clamp a big piece of aluminum to the USB interface or clamp to a rack shelf to try and dissipate some of the heat, this makes a bigger difference than you might think.
The best thing to do is one of the following:
#1 buy a computer with multiple Intel NIC’s, I have an old HP T620 Plus with a 4 port NIC at home that works pretty well, it was around $150 on ebay.
#2 set up vlans on the single NIC present, I think the 219 supports this. This is of course more complex and needs a switch that can handle vlans. Note that with vlans you are limited to the total speed of the NIC, so with 3 networks all going through the same NIC, you can get a maximum of 1/3 the NIC speed if everything is full saturated (probably a rare event).
In the end, you are going to keep seeing slow connections on the USB due to packet loss from various reasons. If anyone ever finds a good USB NIC that works properly, I’d really like to know because it makes a great backup to have on hand and opens up some of the newer mini/micro Celeron powered computers.
In addition to the T620 Plus, there are other HP thin clients that can have a second NIC installed, but this is normally an optical connection. If you have the ability to run an optical connection, then you might be able to save a small amount of money, but you’ll be limited to 2 connections. The HP T620 does not have the card slot for the NIC, you need to get the Plus (or +) version which is a little bigger. There are also several versions of mini/micro desktops on the market for similar prices, and many of these can have a card installed, just research to make sure what you buy can have an add in card installed. Any of the SFF desktops can have cards (low profile) and you can get them for low prices, but obviously bigger chassis. HP Elite 800 G1 comes to mind for low prices, fifth or fourth generation Intel processors, some with vPro.
The board has a M.2 2230 slot for an optional WiFi NIC. Has anyone see any kind of M.2 2230 to Ethernet or dual Ethernet? I am a little confused on the slot as it shows it being a mini pci slot but m.2 which i though were two different standards. Would a mini pci NIC fit in the m.2 slot and work correctly?
Also I have a TP-link EasySmart(managed) switch that does VLANs. I saw somewhere about doing a trunk port and then creating the VLANS on the switch. Is that possible, very involved, would that slash the speeds?
Since this is for my home the small form factor works in the network closet space so I don’t mind trying to make it work. Worse case scenario I can just go back to my edge router Max.
