General Questions

I have monowall set up on a PII 350 with about 128+ RAM, after upgrading to the 1.233 firmware, I noticed on all my computers that web page load times and file download times were noticeably longer. I confirmed it to the firmware upgrade by stepping back to the 1.232 firmware. Any ideas as to the slowdown?

Zedman


PII 350Mhz
Acer AX6BC Mobo
Crucial Ram
Seagate 3Gig IDE HD
3Com 3c985-SX Gigabit Ethernet          Green Interface (ti0)
3Com 3c905B-FX/SC Fast Etherlink XL   Red Interface    (xl0)

You might want to give 1.3b10 a try.  Should run fine on your hardware.

CS...

Are you running the traffic shaper??

Nope, I'm just running the straight firewall with default rules, and I'm using the dhcp server, thats it.

I'm new to m0nowall.  been running pfSense mostly.  I don't know anything about 2.3xx

Im currently running 1.3b10 and it's fine.  More info on your setup would be nice. 

Can you try 1.3b10 as chainsaw suggested?

Aaron

I tried multiple times to upload the 1.3b10 version, but unless its not telling me the current version, it reboots to the 1.232 version. So unless its just not telling me its the beta version it won't load it for some reason.

When I try to download the beta firmware, it reboots but comes up as the 1.233 version. I'm debating weather to try pfSense, but as it applies to more PC platforms, it makes me wonder weather it will take more processing power. I don't have that much to begin with, and I know it doesnt make that much of a difference, some days it just seems like its faster with a faster cpu.

pfSense definitely takes a bit more CPU & RAM, but it's still very meager.

I have an ALIX 2c3 single board computer (AMD LX800 500MHz with 256MB RAM).  Running pfSense it never got over 30% CPU and about 30% RAM (if that).

I think the CPU comes into play when you are doing VPN encryption and huge number crunching like that.  I'm only using mine for traffic shaping, multiple IPs (1:1 NAT) and internal DNS and a couple static routes.  I've never had any hint of slowdowns.

Aaron

The not upgrading from 1.233 to 1.3b10 problem is solved in this thread:

http://forum.m0n0.ch/index.php/topic,1697.0.html

I don't have that much to begin with, and I know it doesnt make that much of a difference, some days it just seems like its faster with a faster cpu.

You're right

I am managing an important network, with over 400 PCs and Macs connected throught the monowall, and i have been obliged to upgrade from a Piii 1Ghz to a little Core 2 E2140, as the Piii CPU was permanently overloaded.

I tried pfSense but I ran into some issues with a watchdog time out on the LAN NIC card which made the system halt completly, and at this point I don't have time to mess around with it, I am going to be going back to monowall becuase of the hard drive usage, I liked the fact that monowall shuts the hard drive down, and I don't need the logging of pfSense.

I don't have that much to begin with, and I know it doesnt make that much of a difference, some days it just seems like its faster with a faster cpu.

You're right

I am managing an important network, with over 400 PCs and Macs connected throught the monowall, and i have been obliged to upgrade from a Piii 1Ghz to a little Core 2 E2140, as the Piii CPU was permanently overloaded.

The original setup should have been more than enough, sounds like the NIC cards or Hardware were getting overloaded more than m0n0wall, what type of NICS were you running? Was m0n0wall running near 100% CPU all the time?

I've run a 500 PC network on a 12/2 Mbps link using nothing more than a 200 MHz PI machine with 128MB of RAM + Traffic Shaping and even at full saturation (which was frequent during peak hours), the machine was lucky to get over 30% CPU. No one ever complained about slow Internet and during full bandwidth peak, I would test with my laptop on speed sites and such and still everything was very responsive and quick.

To this day, it's still running/working without any issues (this was the old AT motherboard chassis) from 1996