Firewalla Gold: PPPoE performance in comparison to DHCP WAN

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Germán Fernández Torres

• June 30, 2021 14:15
• Edited

Hi,

I'm trying out different configurations for my ISP router + firewalla setup.

ISP modem/router in router mode + FW with WAN DHCP

Out of the box, the ISP router does the WAN PPPoE connection and delivers a NATted LAN (192.168.1.0/24) with DHCP enabled. In this setup I configure the Firewalla Gold in router mode with the WAN connection in DHCP mode and the LAN side configured with another NATted network (192.168.77.0/24).

In this configuration internet delivers consistent 600Mbits/s which is roughly what the ISP is giving me in my current plan. The downside is that the firewall doesn't actually get the public IP address. It's the ISP's modem/router who still gets the public IP address and I have a double NAT situation.

 

ISP modem/router in bridge mode + FW with PPPoE WAN

To resolve the double NAT, I can change the ISP modem/router to bridge mode and configure the FW to do the actual PPPoE WAN connection. The Firewalla gets the public IP and I think it's the best setting. The downside is that in this configuration I only get 380~400Mbits/s. There's some performance degradation when changing to this setup.

 

I have heard that other firewalls like pfsense don't handle well the PPPoE connections on APU hardware as they don't fully use all the NIC queues.

Some background information on this:

https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/4821
https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/apu2-1-gigabit-throughput-pfsense/

 

Do you think this may be also the case with Firewalla Gold? How can I achieve same performance in the PPPoE setup?

Thanks!!

 

Germán

 

 

 

 

 

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  Firewalla

  • June 30, 2021 15:50

  We do aware there are random issues with PPPoE performance, and that is dependent on the service provider, and the test used. For example, we have been working with a very nice customer from Canada, and on his system, he can get wire-speed while testing inside the firewalla (gigabit), but if he is outside of it, he gets around 700mbit download and close to gigabit when uploading. I also do remember we have another case from a service provider in the US (likely century link) in which the performance hoovers around 600 to 800 down.  

  In your case, 400 is a little too low. I just created a ticket, and I'll get another developer to take a look.

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