Hello to everyone!
Even though I am a rather BSD "greenhorn", I've used FreeBSD as a router for the better part of a decade. The love I have for the clarity of PF is something that must have been felt by some of you out there as well. However, dark clouds are forming over this paradise that is called my home. (Sorry for being dramatic, I've been searching around for too long now.)
Just to paint a picture: I'm probably a rather "default" FreeBSD server / router (AMD 64, FreeBSD 8.2) user. I have connected my router directly to the cable modem on one interface (nfe0) and another interface (em0) is connected to my internal network. On this server I run samba, a transmission daemon and some more services which are probably not relevant for the discussion.
The problem: Recently I upgraded my bandwidth and discovered that my router was somehow limiting my downstream on the clients. While performing a speed test provided by my ISP (and checked with http://www.speedtest.net/) I discovered that the upstream on my clients are relatively healthy. (Being that I officially get 6 Mbps and the tests show anywhere from 4.X to 5.Y). The 60 Mbps downstream however is completely stuck at 8-9 Mbps. Connecting a device (e.g. my laptop) directly to the cable model shows a dramatic increase to around 54 Mbps. Conclusion: It must be somewhere in my router.
"Googling" around I discovered that this could be possible due to the limitations in the TCP protocol. Another discussion states that PF "limits" it somehow, but as far as I know you can't limit your incoming bandwidth. However, although my background is in computer science, I completely lack all the skills and know how on how to proceed further in discovering what's going on.
Therefor I would like to call out to the BSD community. The forums have been a great guideline for many years for me, but this particular problem is something I haven't seen yet. (Or I completely missed, in that case: Show me the link and I'll be forever grateful.)
If this problem is familiar to someone, please let me know. If someone would like to instruct a greenhorn on how to investigate this problem, please let me know what you would like to see and I'll try to provide it as good as possible.
Kind regards,
Tristan Pothoven
PS. Perhaps completely unrelated, perhaps not: Running a download in an application (e.g. Steam) completely ruins the latency from and to my server. A 1 MB/sec download provides a 400-500 ms delay for a reason I have yet to discover.
Even though I am a rather BSD "greenhorn", I've used FreeBSD as a router for the better part of a decade. The love I have for the clarity of PF is something that must have been felt by some of you out there as well. However, dark clouds are forming over this paradise that is called my home. (Sorry for being dramatic, I've been searching around for too long now.)
Just to paint a picture: I'm probably a rather "default" FreeBSD server / router (AMD 64, FreeBSD 8.2) user. I have connected my router directly to the cable modem on one interface (nfe0) and another interface (em0) is connected to my internal network. On this server I run samba, a transmission daemon and some more services which are probably not relevant for the discussion.
The problem: Recently I upgraded my bandwidth and discovered that my router was somehow limiting my downstream on the clients. While performing a speed test provided by my ISP (and checked with http://www.speedtest.net/) I discovered that the upstream on my clients are relatively healthy. (Being that I officially get 6 Mbps and the tests show anywhere from 4.X to 5.Y). The 60 Mbps downstream however is completely stuck at 8-9 Mbps. Connecting a device (e.g. my laptop) directly to the cable model shows a dramatic increase to around 54 Mbps. Conclusion: It must be somewhere in my router.
"Googling" around I discovered that this could be possible due to the limitations in the TCP protocol. Another discussion states that PF "limits" it somehow, but as far as I know you can't limit your incoming bandwidth. However, although my background is in computer science, I completely lack all the skills and know how on how to proceed further in discovering what's going on.
Therefor I would like to call out to the BSD community. The forums have been a great guideline for many years for me, but this particular problem is something I haven't seen yet. (Or I completely missed, in that case: Show me the link and I'll be forever grateful.)
If this problem is familiar to someone, please let me know. If someone would like to instruct a greenhorn on how to investigate this problem, please let me know what you would like to see and I'll try to provide it as good as possible.
Kind regards,
Tristan Pothoven
PS. Perhaps completely unrelated, perhaps not: Running a download in an application (e.g. Steam) completely ruins the latency from and to my server. A 1 MB/sec download provides a 400-500 ms delay for a reason I have yet to discover.