Hello All,
I've been running OPNsense for many years (thank you for the great firewall product) and have symmetrical 3Gbps internet via PPPoE passthrough... rock solid for many years.
I've noticed some instability the last few months and slowness, but just started investigating the last couple of days as it hasn't been "family affecting".
I noticed initially in the 26.1.8, then upgraded to 26.1.11 and subsequently upgraded to 26.7.1, all with the same performance issue, just slower overall internet performance than usual.
This is an Optiplex with i5-6500 and an Intel X710-DA2 NIC and plenty of RAM, so lots of horsepower when not running anything advanced.
There was a reddit post from someone explaining that in the latest 26.1.11 release they had gone from 8Gbps to 300Mbps performance on an Intel X710:
https://www.reddit.com/r/opnsense/comments/1v2fwhz/comment/ozqs5w8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I did some troubleshooting and decided to migrate to an Intel X520-DA2 NIC that I had lying around.
I've swapped SFP's to DAC's with no resolve... still performance issues.
When tested directly connected to the modem, or on a VLAN connected directly to the modem (via same switching uplinks/infrastructure... bypassing the OPNsense, going directly through the modem), I get the full 3Gbps symmetrical.
OPNsense has been running amazing for years in this exact environment, so this has me a bit puzzled.
Wondering if I should be swapping back to the 24.7 release when older X520 drivers were utilized by FreeBSD 14.1:
https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/OPNsense_network_card_driver
I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to troubleshoot this...
Everything seems to have migrated fine... no bootloader issues, or issues with firewall rules or DHCP; but please let me know if I need to consider anything that could be causing a performance issue in these newer versions.
I'm not running anything out of the ordinary besides Tailscale (no ZenArmor, or advanced IPS / NGFW L7 stuff).
Any guidance you can provide as to how I go about troubleshooting this would be appreciated.
I was honestly hoping it was just a tempermental X710, as I've heard they haven't been as rock solid from a reliability perspective as the X520's are.
Thanks in advance!
I am using X520 connected via DACs and I just tested with 26.7.1_1. I can get >5 GBit/s with "iperf3 -P4".
stupid questions:
- which tunables are used ?
- is a cpu microcode addon loaded ?
Oh, yes. Of course you have to both enable RSS as per documentation and also check with multiple streams...
Just curious what sort of configuration you have for tunables if you can be more specific for the X520 or X710?
I haven't enabled the Microcode plugin stuff, as I've seen most people removing it or disabling recently.
Just following ChatGPT guidance and the fact that my previous configuration and setup on older versions was rock solid and performant.
So unless there has been a change in the way OPNsense uses the hardware or drivers in a major way... I'm not sure the tunables and such should make a difference if I haven't changed them in years.
But I am happy to follow any specified best practices and troubleshooting steps for Intel X520 or X710 configuration tunables and CPU microcode.
The one factor I do want to verify is if you are running PPPoE on your OPNsense setup... as that has been a reason for historical performance grief as FreeBSD has changed over time.
Any guidance or links you recommend are appreciated.
Happy to provide configuration details or snippets if it will help.
Thanks!