Having previously tried out pfSense 2.2.6 on the Inctel Partaker B5 with rather poor results, I thought I’d see if there’s any improvement when using pfSense 2.3 nightly (20160307-0922).
The first thing you’ll notice when upgrading to pfSense 2.3 is the new, beautiful GUI.
Apart from that, other changes include the underlying OS being updated from FreeBSD 10.1 to 10.3-PRERELEASE, with all that that entails.
Realtek gigabit network adapters has historically had some problems under FreeBSD, so I’m going to run a few benchmarks and see what, if anything, has changed.
Starting with iperf, the first test I ran was using the Partaker B5 running pfSense as the client, and my home server with a NetXen NX3031 NIC as the server.
[2.3-BETA][root@fw]/usr/local/bin: ./iperf -i 1 -n 1024M -c server ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to server, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 65.0 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local 10.11.12.250 port 54867 connected with 10.11.12.1 port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0- 1.0 sec 69.6 MBytes 584 Mbits/sec [ 3] 1.0- 2.0 sec 68.0 MBytes 570 Mbits/sec [ 3] 2.0- 3.0 sec 67.9 MBytes 569 Mbits/sec [ 3] 3.0- 4.0 sec 68.0 MBytes 570 Mbits/sec [ 3] 4.0- 5.0 sec 67.9 MBytes 569 Mbits/sec [ 3] 5.0- 6.0 sec 67.9 MBytes 569 Mbits/sec [ 3] 6.0- 7.0 sec 67.9 MBytes 569 Mbits/sec [ 3] 7.0- 8.0 sec 67.6 MBytes 567 Mbits/sec [ 3] 8.0- 9.0 sec 67.9 MBytes 569 Mbits/sec [ 3] 9.0-10.0 sec 68.1 MBytes 571 Mbits/sec [ 3] 10.0-11.0 sec 67.6 MBytes 567 Mbits/sec [ 3] 11.0-12.0 sec 68.0 MBytes 570 Mbits/sec [ 3] 12.0-13.0 sec 67.8 MBytes 568 Mbits/sec [ 3] 13.0-14.0 sec 67.9 MBytes 569 Mbits/sec [ 3] 14.0-15.0 sec 67.9 MBytes 569 Mbits/sec [ 3] 0.0-15.1 sec 1.00 GBytes 570 Mbits/sec
570 Mbps is ok, but nothing to write home about. The same hardware gets about 940 Mbps running Linux. Although a definite improvement from pfSense 2.2, it’s still pretty underwhelming.
However, what’s really interesting is the throughput. So, I hooked up one computer directly to the LAN port, and one directly to the WAN port. I started by using the computer on the LAN port as the server, with the one on the WAN port as the client.
$ iperf -i 1 -n 1024M -c 10.11.12.2 ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 10.11.12.2, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.0 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local 10.11.100.2 port 46278 connected with 10.11.12.2 port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0- 1.0 sec 106 MBytes 890 Mbits/sec [ 3] 1.0- 2.0 sec 104 MBytes 872 Mbits/sec [ 3] 2.0- 3.0 sec 104 MBytes 871 Mbits/sec [ 3] 3.0- 4.0 sec 102 MBytes 860 Mbits/sec [ 3] 4.0- 5.0 sec 104 MBytes 872 Mbits/sec [ 3] 5.0- 6.0 sec 104 MBytes 872 Mbits/sec [ 3] 6.0- 7.0 sec 102 MBytes 860 Mbits/sec [ 3] 7.0- 8.0 sec 104 MBytes 872 Mbits/sec [ 3] 8.0- 9.0 sec 103 MBytes 863 Mbits/sec [ 3] 0.0- 9.9 sec 1.00 GBytes 870 Mbits/sec
870 Mbps; now we’re talking. Ok, and now, turning the computer on the WAN port into the server, with the one on the LAN port as the client.
$ iperf -n 1024M -i 1 -c 10.11.100.2 ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 10.11.100.2, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.0 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local 10.11.12.2 port 44610 connected with 10.11.100.2 port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0- 1.0 sec 110 MBytes 924 Mbits/sec [ 3] 1.0- 2.0 sec 106 MBytes 888 Mbits/sec [ 3] 2.0- 3.0 sec 108 MBytes 902 Mbits/sec [ 3] 3.0- 4.0 sec 106 MBytes 891 Mbits/sec [ 3] 4.0- 5.0 sec 106 MBytes 893 Mbits/sec [ 3] 5.0- 6.0 sec 106 MBytes 890 Mbits/sec [ 3] 6.0- 7.0 sec 106 MBytes 892 Mbits/sec [ 3] 7.0- 8.0 sec 108 MBytes 903 Mbits/sec [ 3] 8.0- 9.0 sec 106 MBytes 890 Mbits/sec [ 3] 0.0- 9.6 sec 1.00 GBytes 897 Mbits/sec
897 Mbps. All else aside, there’s been a massive improvement when using Realtek network adapters (or I did something catastrophically wrong when trying out pfSense 2.2).
If you don’t absolutely need that last, “missing” 100 Mbps, and don’t mind running a nightly snapshot of pfSense, the Partaker B5 can definitely hold its own against much more expensive hardware.