OPNsense A10 Quad Core SSD rack Gen2 hardware offloading

[jerry.jacobs]

Hi All,

We just received the OPNsense A10 Quad Core SSD rack Gen2 appliance and I tried to find out if we could enable the hardware offloading features.

https://www.applianceshop.eu/security-appliances/19-rack-appliances/opnsense-based/dec2630-opnsense-a10-quad-core-ssd-rack-gen2.html

I had a look at the NIC driver:

Intel® I210-AT https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/datasheets/i210-ethernet-controller-datasheet.pdf

This is fearly clear in the datasheet:

* IPv6 support for IP/TCP and IP/UDP receive checksum offload

Which offloading types could I enable for this appliance in the latest OPNSense without affecting performance?

Kind regards,
Jerry Jacobs

[AdSchellevis]

Hi Jerry,

We normally discourage the use of various offloading features, since there are side affects/incompatibilities.
If for example you would like to use IPS, none of the offloading features may be enabled to prevent traffic from being dropped by suricata+netmap.

In case the appliance isn't used for routing, offloading can improve performance, otherwise it might even slow you down (https://wiki.freebsd.org/10gFreeBSD/Router#Disabling_LRO_and_TSO).

So, the short answer in most cases is none.

Best regards,

Ad

[jerry.jacobs]

Hi AdSchellevis,

Thanks for the answer. I will leave it untouched then.

Kind regards,
Jerry Jacobs