This is really odd!!
I don't know when this started, but I recently noticed my GW pings improve and become really repeatable when I am online gaming. You can see the period when I am gaming online.
This is a baremetal OPNsense on a Lenovo M720Q (Intel i5-8500T, 8GB RAM and m.2 drive) with Intel X520-DA2 card. I've tried various SFP+ which connects my ONT to OPNsense but this does not change the behaviour.
I can't think of a valid reason why online gaming would have this effect.
Any ideas?
Yes, because many network drivers implicitely buffer packets, especially small ACK packets. When there is already ongoing traffic, those packets can be piggybacked onto existing data packets.
In most OSes and many drivers, you can tune settings as to what and how this buffering is done. The immediate push of packets incurs a higher interrupt load.
You can look if there are any tuneables for your specific adapter in FreeBSD.
@meyergru - Thanks. I am looking for some ix tuneables.
Do you know if ix0 or ix1 should be WAN, or does this not matter?
Quote from: chrisgtl on April 08, 2026, 10:59:25 PMDo you know if ix0 or ix1 should be WAN, or does this not matter?
It doesn't.
By default for a newly installed OPNsense with 2 or more interfaces of the same kind (hardware), igb0/igc0/ix0/... is LAN and igb1/igc1/ix1/... is WAN. You are free to re-assign to your liking.
Quote from: meyergru on April 08, 2026, 09:51:42 PM[...]You can look if there are any tuneables for your specific adapter in FreeBSD.
If you want to frighten yourself, issue "sysctl dev.ix" from a shell. Actually that one's not so bad, for an Intel driver.