Purple Upload very slow problem

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147 comments

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    Firewalla

    The speed issue with purple upload can be multiple dimensions; for example

    • an issue with the speed test side ... it is just selecting servers that are not good; we are going to create a feature in 1.52, in which we will have the user select the right test server. Which happens to the Gold as well.
    • We did have a driver tunning issue with some environments on the purple "WAN" side. This is related to how the ethernet PHY interacts with some switch modem. This is somewhat fixed in the beta branch and in the process of getting to production soon. 
    • We've seen the issue with ethernet cable (this is no different than gold ... blue ...)
    • Also, there are defective units, which can be looked at using the warranty 

    In your case, the best way is to open a ticket with our support, they likely can help you very quickly. 

     

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    Eldon Li

    The problem is the actual usage is slow (not just the speedtest.net test, the test is just an indication)

    already opened a ticket over weekend, pending initial respond yet

     

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    Eldon Li

    I have my case opened for 3 days, but no one response #51113

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    Firewalla

    Sorry about the delay. Our weekend support staffing is much lighter than on weekdays. And our Monday is pretty much catching up with everything. Please be patient 

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    James Cruz

    Him having the same issue, I just open a ticket today #51470.

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    Hon Yu Tam

    Same issue here, opened ticket #51483.

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    Charles W

    I have the same issue...AGAIN. I spent weeks debugging it with support only to send in my unit. They reset it and sent it back. It was okay for a couple of weeks and now has the same issue AGAIN.

    The only thing I stumbled upon, is that if I use a 4-wire Ethernet cable, uploads seemed okay(at the rated speed I purchased) but of course limits d/l to 100Mbs.

    I've had to put the FWP behind an ASUS router as a backup workaround. That router has been perfectly fine the entire time.

    I'm reluctant to switch to Beta as others are reporting a reboot issue.

     

     

     

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    Kerr Glen

    I've just had a response from support to say it's a suspected H/W issue and it needs to be returned to the factory. I am not sure what this means, whether they expect me to send it in for a repair and be without a device for god knows how long, or they previoulsy suggested I purchase another device, but then if they don't know the issue will I buy another with the same issue?

    I specifically purchased the Purple for the higher throughput so limiting to 100Mb/s is not really an option for me.

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    Charles W

    I first filed the ticket as a suspected H/W issue because I saw that the 100Mbit/s(4-wire cable) seemed to work. 

    I did send in my unit and they returned it saying they reset everything and couldn't find any issues. It was okay for ~3-4weeks and now has the same issues. 

    I'm not sure if it's a hardware issue or software issue at this point, but it's definitely frustrating.

     

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    Firewalla

    We are looking into these issues. Likely something with the timing is still not right. I will ask our team to look into your cases and get them replaced first. The 100mbit is strange, should be looked by the factory. 

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    Kerr Glen

    I have once again today had this issue. Based on what Charles W said in his previous comment I decided to try changing the speed/duplex on the switch port which my firewalla connects. By setting the switch to 100Mb/s Full Duplex, this forces the Firewalla port to the same speed and I see the throughput speeds improve again. I have tried setting both the Firewalla LAN and WAN ports to 100Mb/s Full Duplex and as long as one is set to this speed setting then it seems to resolve the issue. Setting both is better. Obvioulsy not ideal if like me you have a broadband connection faster than 100Mb/s, but it's better than the throughput you get when this issue occurs. If anyone has the ability to force the speed and duplex on your devices this is worth a try until support come up with a fix.

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    Hon Yu Tam

    The issue reappeared for me today as well.

    After reading Kerr's comment I did some testing as well, the only thing that worked for me was reducing the WAN port (eth0) to 100 Mb/s Full Duplex, changing the link speed of eth1 with or without the WAN link speed change made no difference at all for me.

    After the change to the WAN port, I will get 80 Mb/s instead of 100 down and 30 Mb/s up instead of 0.2.

    I ran this command via SSH to temporarily change the WAN link speed (name of WAN link might be different)

    "sudo ethtool -s eth0 speed 100 duplex full autoneg on"

    The configuration only lasts till reboot though. Edited to fix wrong capitalisation in the command.

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    Firewalla

    Thank you Kerr & Hon, I forwarded this piece of work around to our manufacturing facility 

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    Jeremy Peet

    I have recently started experiencing the same issue with my Firewalla Purple. Download speeds are fine but upload speeds have dropped from 20mps to ~0.1mbps. Upload speeds are fine if I use another router. Box Version is 1.974 (43950041).

    This happened once before about 3 months ago and the issue was resolved by resetting policy rules. Doing that again isn't working this time.

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    Firewalla

    I have created a ticket for you, will have someone look at this one and your previous ticket where they reset the policies.

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    Ian

    Same issue here! Firewalla Purple. Box Version 1.974. Upload speeds are incredibly slow. Speed test of the router behind the firewall is full gig up and down but from in front of the Firewalla only getting 1.86Mbps up. Problem just started a couple days ago. Yesterday, restarting the Firewalla temporarily fixed it. Today it isn't.

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    Hon Yu Tam

    Small update, running "sudo ethtool -S eth0 speed 100 duplex full autoneg on", auto negotiate on instead of off improved performance. However this limits the bandwidth to 100 mbps.

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    Kerr Glen

    I have done some additonal testing on this and I have discovered that when set to 1000Mb/s the WAN port generates lots and lots of CRC errors on the frames it is transmitting. This is why the upload speeds will be bad. The LAN port seems to be unaffected. The only workaround at present I have found is to force the WAN port to be 100Mb/s. When you do the CRC errors stop.

    I sent this info to Firewalla, no reply as yet. I have tried different types of cable, up to shielded CAT8 and it makes no difference, so it's definately looking more like a H/W issue.

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    Firewalla

    Our manufacturing partner is looking at a couple of boards sent back to us. They suspect there may be a bad part between CPU->Phy or a defect while putting the chips (SMT stage) on there (something called an open solder). At the moment, it is either a bad part or a soldering issue. 

    (Update 10/1: likely the problem is a bad batch of boards in the SMT cycle)

    If you do have issues like this, please contact our support. If we can't figure out the issue in a day or two, we will start the RMA process; All of the purple units out there are still under warranty.

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    Charles W

    I sent my unit back(2nd time) and just got the replacement. If it is a hardware issue, it's something that's degrading/failing in the field which is not a good situation and difficult to diagnose and fix and prevent on future units. [Sorry cross-posted at the same time as above.) If it is a cold solder joint, that could explain why it may degrade in the field. Expansion/Contraction due to heat / humidity cycles could exacerbate an already weak solder joint and make intermittent contact. Hopefully changing re-flow temperature or duration will help.

     

    BTW, I also had/have a cosmetic issue in the built-in speed test. It would always report 20.74Mb/s all the time even though my rated upload is only 10-12Mb/s. The new unit does the same thing. I thought that was strange but un-related to the actually upload issue.

     

     

     

     

     

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    Firewalla

    We hired a local SMT QA staff four months ago to follow through with all the board build... (the travel restrictions are not friendly to people in the USA) So far, he has been improving and adjusting the manufacturing process. Hopefully, the cold/open solder (or issues like that) will get less with better process adjustments. 

    We are tuning the speed test as well. Sometimes the slow upload is just related to a bad speed test :( Hopefully, 1.52 will fix this)

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    Kerr Glen

    Today I have the same problem on my Firewalla, only now it's with download speeds. I have now had to reboot my Firewalla and set the LAN port to 100Mb/s. Seems to have fixed for now.

    Seems this potential issue with the soldering could be affecting more components.

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    Geber

    I had the same problem on my Purple this past week.  I upgraded to Beta Release 1.51 (79) and it appears to have resolved the issue.  My upload speeds are between 50 - 90 MBPs, that's a vast improvement over the .03 MBPS I was getting over the past week.  I ran multiple speed tests upon discovering the problem last week and they were all consistently slow, since upgrading I haven't had any slow tests.  That kind of leads me to believe this is a software issue, but I'll comment if I have any slow tests moving forward.  

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    Charles W

    That could be coincidence. 1.51(79) is the software version for the App. The software version for the Box is 1.974X. Did you reboot when you upgraded?

     

     

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    Geber

    Apologies, I provided the wrong version number.  My Box is in the beta program, version 1.9742 (a7000ea1), and it was after joining the beta program, updating the software, and rebooting that my uploads started moving at speed again.  I had restarted the box several times before with no luck.  

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    Geber

    Okay, it’s back to painfully slow uploads. I’m taking it off the network, as it’s become more annoying than useful.

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    Firewalla

    @geber did you talk to our support? we can take a look at it remotely. if it is bad, we will need to RMA the unit.

     

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    Geber

    I have a ticket open with support and they are going to look at it remotely.

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    viking

    Same problem here.    1 gig connection reduced to 1gbit uploads.  Downloads are mostly fine.      Ticket:  53237

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    Steve Wright

    I am also experiencing this again. uploads reduced to 0.1 mbps. download is 920.  :(

    I created a ticket. this is the second time. First incident support connected remotely and fixed it. Hopefully something easy again. last time support cited it was a driver issue and switching to beta fixed it. The app said i was also on the box beta though. I've been on that since it was fixed but have recently hit this issue again. 

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