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QoS issues (again)

.Hello @all!

So I have asked in the past a few questions about QoS, but I had a more complicated setup with two WANs and additionally the second was a bonding between an ADSL line and a 4G+ sim card, which was nor really steady regarding the bandwidth

Time went by and I finally have a decent FTTH connection (500/50)

Now the never-ending question: When I perform a speedtest I get a result of 508 down / 53 up

What I want is to limit my whole network to 495 down/ 49 up

I went to system services and created a Traffic shaping rule as follows

Then in Firewall rules I created a top firewall rule and set as source zone my LANs/VLANs and Destination zones WAN.

In this rule I set Shape Traffic to the traffic shaping rule above

I run a command line speedtest from a linux machine and this is what I get


Speedtest by Ookla

Server: LANCOM LTD - Athens (id: 12031)
ISP: FORTHnet SA
Idle Latency: 2.97 ms (jitter: 0.34ms, low: 2.83ms, high: 4.02ms)
Download: 292.54 Mbps (data used: 251.7 MB)
6.49 ms (jitter: 1.77ms, low: 3.61ms, high: 14.59ms)
Upload: 46.91 Mbps (data used: 21.8 MB)
3.09 ms (jitter: 0.31ms, low: 2.55ms, high: 4.53ms)
Packet Loss: 0.0%

Upload Speed is not exactly what I want but I don't mind.

But download speed is a far cry from 495Mbps

Funny thing is that if I change the download limit from 62000 to say, 70000, I get the exact speed from speedtest

Now I turn off the firewall rule and immediately run another speedtest

Speedtest by Ookla

Server: HYPERHOSTING - Athens (id: 5377)
ISP: FORTHnet SA
Idle Latency: 2.40 ms (jitter: 0.55ms, low: 1.71ms, high: 3.14ms)
Download: 408.47 Mbps (data used: 490.1 MB)
30.79 ms (jitter: 1.59ms, low: 3.77ms, high: 40.38ms)
Upload: 51.28 Mbps (data used: 23.9 MB)
44.51 ms (jitter: 8.94ms, low: 11.40ms, high: 301.76ms)
Packet Loss: 0.0%

My kids are downloading something from PS4 at the moment so not the full 500Mbps speed but still..

I have created another traffic shaping rule with the exact same numbers but this time instead of individual I set it to shared.

I get the exact same results: Setting download bandwidth to 62000 I get a speed of 300. Changing again to 70000 I get no increase.

Disabling the rule gets me back to 400+

Can someone explain what is going on?



Edited TAGs
[edited by: Erick Jan at 8:09 AM (GMT -7) on 20 Sep 2024]
  • Well, top is indeed what I run.

    As I mentioned it does not exceed 72% and even that load was only momentarily

    Does traffic shaping tax the CPU more?

    I assume it does, but still, 72% is fairly low. It still has room to stretch its legs

    For what it is worth, here is the CPU graph from the GUI (last 24hours)

     
    Sophos XG Home Licence.

    Machine: Checkpoint 3100 appliance (Intel Atom C2558 CPU, 6GB Ram, 250GB sata SSD)

  • Thank you for the graph. What it doesn't show is what the load on each core is? 72% would be the overall load for all cores. Probably means one or more cores is maxed.

    Ian

    XG115W - v20.0.2 MR-2 - Home

    XG on VM 8 - v21 GA

    If a post solves your question please use the 'Verify Answer' button.

  • I guess there is always this possibility

    I run top from the console but top isn't clear, either.

    htop would be a much better option since it distinguishes the CPU usage per core, but it is not installed

    Do you happen to know if it is possible to install htop? Is there any possibility at all for sophos to install something additional using a package manager?

    EDIT: Well, I found this page https://community.sophos.com/sophos-xg-firewall/f/recommended-reads/134787/sophos-firewall-understanding-top-and-atop-command-in-sophos-firewall-utm#mcetoc_1g4rqfs483

    I tried running atop and top with Irix mode on and hit 1 to sort by CPU

    While I CPU no CPU going to full utilization I must admit that don't  have a clear picture about it. 

    EDIT2: I created a video while running 2 speedtests and showing top in the background. 

    Don't know if you can understand more than I do, but if you can spare a minute, please take a look.

    EDIT3: I took another video running speedtest more times. Will post it in 5

    Here it is/cfs-file/__key/communityserver-discussions-components-files/126/Spedtestvideo.mp4

     
    Sophos XG Home Licence.

    Machine: Checkpoint 3100 appliance (Intel Atom C2558 CPU, 6GB Ram, 250GB sata SSD)

  • CPU1 runs to 99.7% and appears to carry the load which looks like thE CPU performance is the limiting factor.

    Ian

    XG115W - v20.0.2 MR-2 - Home

    XG on VM 8 - v21 GA

    If a post solves your question please use the 'Verify Answer' button.

  • I guess you mean cpu0, but it makes no difference anyway..

    It appears that yes, this is the problem.

    I need to consider a new appliance. Thanks Ian.

    EDIT: I double checked the video and it seems that the high numbers are for id (which I assume means idle ??)

    Are we sure that the CPU is being heavily loaded? If you have some time to explain to me what to observe, please do.

    EDIT2: OK just observed in the video a 99% in si on CPU1. I assume this is what you were saying...

     
    Sophos XG Home Licence.

    Machine: Checkpoint 3100 appliance (Intel Atom C2558 CPU, 6GB Ram, 250GB sata SSD)

  • It is an old behavior, single connections are getting loaded to a single core. Therefore, most speed tests nowadays offers multi download speedtest per default. 

    If you start another speedtest or another download of a file, it will be loaded to the second CPU etc. 

    Thats the behavior for years (UTM and SFOS). 

    __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

  • Hi Chris,

    if you watch the top of the display you will note that CPU1 idle drops to 0 a number of times in the video.

    Ian

    XG115W - v20.0.2 MR-2 - Home

    XG on VM 8 - v21 GA

    If a post solves your question please use the 'Verify Answer' button.

  • Thanks for the explanation,  !

    The fact that a single speedtest, with traffic shaping enabled, overloads a CPU core is the problem, however. If a single test could go to 480-490 then I would be OK. However, even one speedtest taxes the CPu and can go up to about 300Mbits.

    So I guess I am leaving shaping disabled for now and will look into upgrading my firewall appliance with something more powerful.

     : 

    Yes I saw it.

    Thanks again, Ian!

     
    Sophos XG Home Licence.

    Machine: Checkpoint 3100 appliance (Intel Atom C2558 CPU, 6GB Ram, 250GB sata SSD)

  • Just wanted to follow up on this issue.

    So yesterday I tried setting up another appliance that I have, which has a Celeron N3350. The Celeron is newer and has better single core score than the Atom, but the Atom is faster overall. In fact, I replaced the Celeron with the Atom and since then, the GUI in not painfully slow anymore. However I needed to verify if the better single core performance of the Celeron would make any difference and how much.

    And - what do you know - performing the same tests, I was still not getting the desired speeds from the Celeron (it was hitting 100%, too), but I got speeds of about 380Mbits.

    So it is 100% certain that CPU is the limiting factor in my situation. I decommissioned the Celeron appliance again, though, because as mentioned, the GUI is painfully slow. The Atom loads the pages noticeably faster. 

    I am in the process of ordering a mini PC with a bunch of Intel cards and an Intel N100 CPU. I am certain that N100 will be able to handle speeds even more than 1Gbit, so I will be OK for many years.

    Thanks again for all that offered their help!

     
    Sophos XG Home Licence.

    Machine: Checkpoint 3100 appliance (Intel Atom C2558 CPU, 6GB Ram, 250GB sata SSD)

  • Make sure they are are not i219 or 225/6 series chips and there bios is NOT UEFI.

    Ian

    XG115W - v20.0.2 MR-2 - Home

    XG on VM 8 - v21 GA

    If a post solves your question please use the 'Verify Answer' button.