OPNSense & BT Full Fibre 900 (PPPoE)

Dodger

Dodger

Dodger

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Hi, i’m quite new to the world of OPNSense so please bare with me!

I have purchased a Qnap QGD-1602 to use as my home server/nas/router/firewall as my old UDM router died! (Thanks WJA96 for your previous Qnap Guardian recommendation!).

I’ve managed to successfully setup a virtual machine with OPNSense installed and, setup a Unifi Docker Container for Wifi access points.

Having researched these forums and online, I can see that PPPoE does not work great with OPNSense (FreeBSD) for higher fibre connections (910Mbps) and as a result, PPPoE is only able to utilise one CPU core. This results in a hardwired speed test achieving a maximum speed of ~550Mbs.

Questions

1. I’m thinking of moving to EE Business Fibre Broadband however, does anyone know what authentication method is used? I’m hoping its not PPPoE?

2. If I purchased a Static IP address, does anyone know if I’ll be able to achieve the full download speed?

3. If I put the EE Business Smart Hub 2 (basically a BT router) into Bridge mode, would this help? Or, is this just the same as plugging the ONT directly into the WAN port of the QGD-1602?

4. Is the Atom C3558 CPU process of the QGD-1602 powerful enough to achieve 910Mbs download using OPNSense in a virtual machine?

Ultimately, I would like to fully utilise my fibre connection.

My current setup is:

BT Fibre 900 > Openreach ONT > QGD-1602 Adapter 1 (WAN)

QGD-1602 Apapter 2 (LAN) > QGD-1602 Switch Port 1 (DHCP)

Thanks in advance!
 
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All BT (broadband) services use PPPoE. Where are you seeing business broadband from EE, I thought they just referred you to BT Business?

There's no point bridging a Smart Hub when you have FTTP, the ONT already presents Ethernet. I'm surprised the CPU in the Qnap box can't do full rate PPPoE though, it seems fairly punchy.
 
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You've virtualised OPNsense on the QNAP? What exact VM specs have you given it, and is it using pass thru at all for the NICs? I don't use Virtualisation Station or whatever it is on the Guardian so not sure if it can do it or not. If not, which IO device have you given it? During the speed tests, have you checks top/htop on both the host and the VM?

Only TT residential and Sky use DHCP as far as I know.
 
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TalkTalk Business are PPPoE. TalkTalk non-business are DHCP. Sky are also DHCP.

How many cores have you allocated to the VM?
 
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Caged said:
All BT (broadband) services use PPPoE. Where are you seeing business broadband from EE, I thought they just referred you to BT Business?

There's no point bridging a Smart Hub when you have FTTP, the ONT already presents Ethernet. I'm surprised the CPU in the Qnap box can't do full rate PPPoE though, it seems fairly punchy.
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Thanks for clearing up the bridging point, my thoughts exactly about just plugging the ONT Ethernet cable directly to OPNSense WAN Port Device.

If I plug my 2019 MacBook pro laptop directly into the QGD-1602 switch port on DHCP and run a speed test, I get ~550Mbs.

If I connect the laptop directly to the ONT and setup a PPPoE connection, I get the full download speed, so definitely something in my hardware or software setup.

The ONT is currently plugged into 5G Adapter 1 on the QGD-1602.

Network connection is obtained after the initial OPNSense setup, I then plug a small Ethernet cable from Adapter 2 which has been defined as LAN into the Switch port 1.

Hope this helps answer your question?

Thanks.
 
ChrisD. said:
You've virtualised OPNsense on the QNAP? What exact VM specs have you given it, and is it using pass thru at all for the NICs? I don't use Virtualisation Station or whatever it is on the Guardian so not sure if it can do it or not. If not, which IO device have you given it? During the speed tests, have you checks top/htop on both the host and the VM?

Only TT Business use DHCP as far as I know.
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Hi, I have managed to setup/virtualise OPNsense yep. Assigned 2 cores, 8GB ram.

I am using passthrough as the CPU model and also selected VirtIO for WAN and LAN when setting up the virtual machine.

On the Qnap Virtual adapters, the WAN port is set to do not assign an IP address and for the LAN port, I’ve assigned a manual static IP address.

I’ve not yet done any checking for top/htop sorry!
 
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ChrisD. said:
You've virtualised OPNsense on the QNAP? What exact VM specs have you given it, and is it using pass thru at all for the NICs? I don't use Virtualisation Station or whatever it is on the Guardian so not sure if it can do it or not. If not, which IO device have you given it? During the speed tests, have you checks top/htop on both the host and the VM?

Only TT residential and Sky use DHCP as far as I know.
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This. I'd be looking at the virt side first. The issue with FreeBSD and PPPoE is limited to NICs using the igb driver. Those using em and other drivers aren't affected, so there's a place to start. If you do have Intel NICs using igb then personally I'd either swap them or just use a Linux based router instead, which doesn't have those issues.
 
Rainmaker said:
This. I'd be looking at the virt side first. The issue with FreeBSD and PPPoE is limited to NICs using the igb driver. Those using em and other drivers aren't affected, so there's a place to start. If you do have Intel NICs using igb then personally I'd either swap them or just use a Linux based router instead, which doesn't have those issues.
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I have 6 adapters in the QGD-1602…two of which are SFP.

Maybe I will make Adapter 3 and 4 the WAN and LAN setup which are both 1G rather than 5G and see if download speed improves? Is this what you are referring to in relation to using em?

In the meantime, I’ll try to find out the model of the NIC’s in the device, thanks.
 
ChrisD. said:
On what? The Guardian, or the VM? Are any cores on either pegged at 100%? If so, what process(es) are using it? top/htop will show you.
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On the VM - I have OPNSense open and am looking at the CPU usage (I’m probably looking in the wrong place?). Sounds like it! Looks like I will need to install a process monitor to get the top/htop?
 
The Qnap documentation is really poor but it talks about having 2x 10Gb interconnects with the switch, so you shouldn't have to use the host ports and pass anything through.
 
Also, for what it's worth, I've used Virtualisation Station on their NAS devices in the past. I think it uses kvm underneath, but I've never had particularly decent performance regardless of the OS.
 
Dodger said:
On the VM - I have OPNSense open and am looking at the CPU usage (I’m probably looking in the wrong place?). Sounds like it! Looks like I will need to install a process monitor to get the top/htop?
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ssh to it and run the command, it should automatically show whatever is using CPU at the top of the list. I don't know if it has top or htop bundled.

Also what networking mode is it? bridged, host etc?
 
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I’ve done a speed test directly using Adapter 2 which has been configured as the LAN and have now managed to get 700Mbs down and 110Mbs upload.
Still not the full 910Mbs but much better than the ~550Mbs I was getting when using one of the Switch ports!
Still the results seem inconclusive, the speeds are fluctuating a lot when laptop is connected to switchport and also the LAN adapter 2…

However, seems I get slower download speeds in general when using one of the switch ports :-(
 
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Caged said:
The Qnap documentation is really poor but it talks about having 2x 10Gb interconnects with the switch, so you shouldn't have to use the host ports and pass anything through.
Click to expand...
I found that if I did not connect Adapter 2 to one of the Switch Ports then DHCP did not work on the Switch Ports…
 
ChrisD. said:
ssh to it and run the command, it should automatically show whatever is using CPU at the top of the list. I don't know if it has top or htop bundled.

Also what networking mode is it? bridged, host etc?
Click to expand...
I will run the command and share the results.
Networking mode in the QNAP virtual machine setup is ‘Bridged network’.
 
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