YouTube Performance issue.

[TroutWA]

So, this one is a strange one.

A long time user of Untangle, I decided to give OpnSense a go. Part of the reason was that the hardware now about 6 years old (a Chinese unbranded industrial PC with an intel 2 core processor and 4 ethernet ports)

I bought a GMKtec AMD Ryzen 5 7640HS Mini PC--NucBox M6 Ultra with 2x 2.5G Realtek ethernet ports

It all installed fine once I loaded the Realtek Drivers. Once I got it up and running I got download speeds of 960M and upload of 46M from a 1000M/50M link, so really happy. But I noticed that YouTube video struggle when I am viewing on my PCs. Mobile and TV are fine. It gets to the point that that it buffers even a 240p stream.

Somewhere I read it was an issue with OpnSense and the new Realtek cards.

So I loaded up PFsense on the old appliance and swapped it out (to avoid down time on the home network)

YouTube worked fine, network overall speed dropped 250M/30M.

Next, I got my new GMKtek loaded PFsense (struggled a bit with the drivers much easier process in OPNSense) and swapped it again and I get the same problem I had with OPNSence.

So yes, on the surface it does appear to be hardware related but why does it only affect YouTube on PC. Is there a fix other than swapping hardware. I am contemplating getting one of the Deciso Appliances but that probably won't happen for a few months, and the network cards are inbuild on the GMKtec so I can't swap them. Any idea?

Thanks,

Diego

[meyergru]

Your up- and download speeds differ "bigly" - maybe try traffic shaping (see https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=42985.0, #26)?

[pfry]

I wouldn't expect any issues related to asymmetry, with that much bandwidth. Any individual video should only run a few Mb/s. GoogTube is going to be QUIC (UDP) anyway, unless UDP 80/443 is blocked. I'd tend to look at the affected PCs - anything unusual about them.

[BrandyWine]

Watch the lobby dashboard widget for LAN WAN data rates while watching a any stream (flix, hulu, tube, etc), seems they stream in data bursts and not a constant stream of data.

Mostly, the fw is a router based on freeBSD 14.3, so tune it to be a router.
Any other plugins enabled that would cause extra processing on every packet?
CPU MEM usage normal?

[TroutWA]

Watch the lobby dashboard widget for LAN WAN data rates while watching a any stream (flix, hulu, tube, etc), seems they stream in data bursts and not a constant stream of data.

Mostly, the fw is a router based on freeBSD 14.3, so tune it to be a router.
Any other plugins enabled that would cause extra processing on every packet?
CPU MEM usage normal?

Perfectly fine. And as I mentioned, YouTube works better on the underperforming hardware. But I have lower bandwidth over all.

Your up- and download speeds differ "bigly" - maybe try traffic shaping (see https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=42985.0, #26)?

@meyergru unfortunately that's the way it is in Australia unless I get a business symmetrical plan at a much greater cost. BTW thank you for the link I will work through the recommendations.

I wouldn't expect any issues related to asymmetry, with that much bandwidth. Any individual video should only run a few Mb/s. GoogTube is going to be QUIC (UDP) anyway, unless UDP 80/443 is blocked. I'd tend to look at the affected PCs - anything unusual about them.

@pfry QUIC keeps popping up when I was researching the issue. But what does not make sense to me (probably because I don't know enough or understand the protocol) why is it only affecting Windows PCs and why does it go away if I swap the router with a lower performance router with identical configuration?

Thanks everyone for your assistance.

Diego

[pfry]

[...]
@pfry QUIC keeps popping up when I was researching the issue. But what does not make sense to me (probably because I don't know enough or understand the protocol) why is it only affecting Windows PCs and why does it go away if I swap the router with a lower performance router with identical configuration? [...]

It's usually firewall (all firewalls, including end station) or browser protocol support issues. Not always, of course. If UDP 80/443 is blocked or not supported, it falls back to TCP (making an assumption here, as I haven't tested it in a while)... which should be fine... I was going by the possibility that you had an unnoticed config difference between the old and new firewalls, but re-reading your post, it seems unlikely.

Looking at OPNsense, just check your sessions ("Firewall: Diagnostics: Sessions") or logs ("Firewall: Log Files: Live View") for (usually) UDP 443.

As a data point, I'm on a very sad old Windows machine right now. It works... fine, considering. Oh - it has an old RTL8110 plugged into an RTL8125 on my firewall. Perhaps "netstat -es" on the Windows machines might be useful, and you do the same on the firewall (should be "-i" and "-s" on FreeBSD).