I'm having stability issues with my setup and the itnernet keeps getting disconnected without recovery and the only option is to restart the open sense vm.
The setup:
I've got a proxmox server running virtualized OPNSENSE.
VM specs:
CPU: host mode <core I5-4670> x1
RAM: 4GB <phys ; 1866 MHz DDR3 CL 11>
My LAN interface is a linux bridge (VIRT IO) and OPNSense provides internet access through the proxmox linux bridge to the physical lan and different vms.
My WAN interface is a USB 3.0 gigabit tp-link dongle (which IK it's a bad idea just bear with me, there's more to the story).
So. Currently I've set up a cronjob in OPNSense to reset the interfaces every 4 hours and that seemed to do the trick for about a week but I know this is no permanent solution.
Today I just got another failure that required a restart of the VM.
I get the full speed of my contract which is 400Mbps down/30Mbps up no problem.
I know if I get much more speed I will require a CPU upgrade in the future since I read this is a single threaded load but that's not the issue here.
The issue is the packet loss and the failures that don't recover themselves.
A little bit of info about the ISP and my previous setup which was a little unstable but nothing concerning like this:
I had the ISP's router in bridge mode, it's one of those fiber in a box type of deal and it connects to their GPON network directly.
My router was TP-LINK Archer C1200 which would get hanged and I found this to be an issue due to the hihgh traffic to its own public IP caused by my nextcloud instance.
Packet loss was ok dropping about 1% or less when pinging google.
Now it's up to 8% in the same time frame (30 mins) + the total failure that ends up happening randomly.
I am no expert in networking and I wouldn't know how to diagnose this.
But given the problem is unstability and I've experienced this before with this exact ethernet dongle, and I've expressed my suspicion of it before I blame it on shoddy hardware.
Now my questions are the following:
- What NICs do you recommend for connecting to a PPPoE network at symetric gigabit speeds? (try not to make me break the bank please :P)
- Does the brand of the NIC matter at all? or should I just focus on getting one with a specific ethernet chip?
- Do you have an any other suggestions as to what can be causing this unstability? (but please do answer my hardware question)
If you could rank me a few ethernet cards it's much appreciated <3.
Thank you all in advace! <3
EDIT:
My usb dongle now works just fine connected to the ISP's router.
It turns out that if you do USB passthrogh to a VM there's some kind of issue that causes packet loss when it comes to ethernet dongles (or at the very least my TP-LINK UE330).
A few days later after making this post I thought "Why not just pass through the entire PCI-E USB controller" and so I did and all the issues disappeared, I've been monitoring the stability of the connection and it's rock solid! Even better than it's ever been!
All it took to resolve the issue is doing PCI-E passthrough to the OPNSense VM instead of just the specific USB port.
Of course this solution only good for me because I don't have a need to plug anything into the USBs of the server's motherboard.
Because of this I will still be looking into a good ethernet adapter.
Thank you all for the info and replies it's very useful!
Sorry I took a while to answer I've been busy plus I wanted to make sure at least a week had gone by before I confirmed this solution to ya'll so if anyone else tries it they know how I solved it and are not lead astray!
Angain thank ya'll!
EDIT 2:
TL;DR
Don't use network dongles, dongles bad.
OPNsense donesn't seem to support the chipsets RTL8111 and RTL8125.
If you have this hardware and your OPNsense is on a vm you can use virtio interfaces and connect them to the physical network over linux birdges.
This works with PPPoE and it's been my working setup without any issues since 17/09/2024 (currently 31/10/2024)
Just look at this table from the I210 datasheet and the ranks are:
Did you ever get problems resolved? For a 400mbps connection. Tried router on a stick. And if you use the onboard Realtek nic. Then use opnsense driver instead of the driver that come with the install.
Quote from: vpx on July 09, 2024, 03:58:14 PM
Just look at this table from the I210 datasheet and the ranks are:
Where does i225 and i226 fit in that chart, prices between i350 and i225/226 are not that different, especially used. Yes I know i225/226 are 2.5gbps, but they handle gigabit just fine too.
Those should be closer to I210 I think. They have same number of queues.
Just keep in mind that against I210, those NICs depending on the CHIP to CHIP may have weird behaviour
Regards,
S.
My usb dongle now works just fine connected to the ISP's router.
It turns out that if you do USB passthrogh to a VM there's some kind of issue that causes packet loss when it comes to ethernet dongles (or at the very least my TP-LINK UE330).
A few days later after making this post I thought "Why not just pass through the entire PCI-E USB controller" and so I did and all the issues disappeared, I've been monitoring the stability of the connection and it's rock solid! Even better than it's ever been!
All it took to resolve the issue is doing PCI-E passthrough to the OPNSense VM instead of just the specific USB port.
Of course this solution only good for me because I don't have a need to plug anything into the USBs of the server's motherboard.
Because of this I will still be looking into a good ethernet adapter.
Thank you all for the info and replies it's very useful!
Sorry I took a while to answer I've been busy plus I wanted to make sure at least a week had gone by before I confirmed this solution to ya'll so if anyone else tries it they know how I solved it and are not lead astray!
Angain thank ya'll!
i have an intel i226 dual port got it new from amazon for $50 my 1200 mb comcast hits full speed with it.i hit around 1300 to 1400mb on that card with no problem. i went with i226 because some people reported problems with the intel i225.
i dropped that card into my system as a wan card and i have not had any problems what so ever. worked right out of the box with all default settings on the network card.
i already had applied all of these settings https://binaryimpulse.com/2022/11/opnsense-performance-tuning-for-multi-gigabit-internet/ prior to getting this card for my 10gb lan side
With the i226 card, what version of OPNsense are you running? I see a thread about different kernels up in the general 24.7 section and it helping to work with these multigig interfaces.