PFSense - Network - Configure Gigabit Speed Networking

Some systems may struggle to get full gigabit.

There are many factors that can influence this:

• pfSense by design is able to use only 1 core per connection. This limitation still exists, however single-core performance has considerably improved.
• Routers rarely open just one connection, so a single connection is rarely a bottleneck in the real world.
• Web browsers opens about 8 TCP connections per website, Torrent clients open hundreds of connections, Netflix opens multiple TCP connections when streaming video, etc.

Many modern NICs have multiple transmit and receive queues, being able to work simultaneously on many connections.

• Intel I210-AT Network Interfaces have 4 transmit and 4 receive queues, and can simultaneously handle 4 connections.
• I211-AT Network Interfaces have 2 transmit/receive queues, but is still good enough to deliver 1Gbit on pfSense when more one than one connection is used.

With some fine tuning, pfSense can take advantage of this and route at 1Gbit when using more than one connection.

Navigate to System → Advanced → Networking.

In Network Interfaces, at the bottom:

• Hardware Checksum Offloading: Not Checked.
• Hardware TCP Segmentation Offloading Not Checked.
• Hardware Large Receive Offloading Not Checked.

Edit some settings from the shell.

SSH to the box or connect with the serial cable.

Edit /boot/loader.conf.local (you may need to create it, if it doesn't exist) and insert the following settings:

/boot/loader.conf

# agree with Intel license terms
legal.intel_ipw.license_ack=1
legal.intel_iwi.license_ack=1
 
# This is the magic. If you don't set this, queues won't be utilized properly.
# Allow multiple processes for receive/transmit processing.
hw.igb.rx_process_limit="-1"
hw.igb.tx_process_limit="-1"
 
# More settings to play with below.  Not strictly necessary.
 
# Force NIC to use 1 queue (Don't really need this).
# hw.igb.num_queues=1
 
# Give enough RAM to network buffers (default is usually OK).
# kern.ipc.nmbclusters="1000000"
 
#net.pf.states_hashsize=2097152
#hw.igb.rxd=4096
#hw.igb.txd=4096
 
#net.inet.tcp.syncache.hashsize="1024"
#net.inet.tcp.syncache.bucketlimit="100"

After saving this file, reboot the router to apply it.

Run some tests to verify that your settings worked properly.

The easiest way it to use iperf3 with multiple connections, where one device is on the LAN and the other one in the internet.

On the server run the following command:

iperf3 -s

On your LAN run this command:

iperf3 -c SERVER_IP_HERE -P 4

If everything went well, you should be seeing about 940Mbit/s throughput, similar to the snippet below:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[  5]  43.00-44.00  sec  56.1 MBytes   470 Mbits/sec    0    481 KBytes       
[  7]  43.00-44.00  sec  55.7 MBytes   468 Mbits/sec    0    438 KBytes       
[SUM]  43.00-44.00  sec   112 MBytes   938 Mbits/sec    0             
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[  5]  44.00-45.00  sec  56.4 MBytes   473 Mbits/sec    0    481 KBytes       
[  7]  44.00-45.00  sec  56.1 MBytes   470 Mbits/sec    0    438 KBytes       
[SUM]  44.00-45.00  sec   112 MBytes   943 Mbits/sec    0             
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[  5]  45.00-46.00  sec  56.1 MBytes   470 Mbits/sec    0    481 KBytes       
[  7]  45.00-46.00  sec  55.6 MBytes   466 Mbits/sec    0    438 KBytes       
[SUM]  45.00-46.00  sec   112 MBytes   936 Mbits/sec    0             
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[  5]  46.00-47.00  sec  57.7 MBytes   484 Mbits/sec    0    481 KBytes       
[  7]  46.00-47.00  sec  55.0 MBytes   461 Mbits/sec    0    438 KBytes       
[SUM]  46.00-47.00  sec   113 MBytes   945 Mbits/sec    0             
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[  5]  47.00-48.00  sec  55.2 MBytes   463 Mbits/sec    0    481 KBytes       
[  7]  47.00-48.00  sec  55.8 MBytes   468 Mbits/sec    0    438 KBytes       
[SUM]  47.00-48.00  sec   111 MBytes   931 Mbits/sec    0  

If everything went well, you should be seeing about 940Mbit/s throughput.