General Questions

Hi,
im using Monowall:  1.23
built on Sat Mar 10 14:21:43 CET 2007

Im very contently with this Firewall.

But there is a traffic problem. Im using a 20 M/Bit line. But i can use only 12 M/bit for Downloads.
I have used a SMC Hardware Router before Monowall. The SMC Router could use the full speed of my
Bandwith.

Do somone know what i'm doing wrong?


Thy, Bruce

What are the specs of your hardware (CPU, RAM, and NIC's)?

Do you see any errors on the Diagnostics -> Interfaces page?

Hi,
thx for your fast request.

My Hardware is the following:

CPU:   Intel P3 - 500 Mhz
Ram:   512 MB
Nic's:   2 x Realtek 8139 10/100 M/Bit

Nic's:   2 x Realtek 8139 10/100 M/Bit

Hooray, another (probably) easy one! Throw out the Realteks and use some decent NICs (Intel is always a good choice). From the FreeBSD rl driver source code:

Code:

* The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
* probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made ...

Personally, I've found them not to be quite that bad with other operating systems, but it's a well known fact that they don't perform very well with FreeBSD.

Your P3 500 MHz CPU should be able to handle *way* more than 12 Mbps with good NICs.

Yeah I agree with Manuel. Except for one part - those things are junk on any OS. I've never had problems with them, the performance is just horrid.

The way to tell if you're just maxing out the capabilities of the hardware with the junk NIC's is to watch your CPU utilization. If it's pegged, it's the NIC's.

The other possibility is a duplex mismatch - check Status -> Interfaces for interface errors and collisions.

OK,
thx a lot. I'll bye 2 Intel Cards via Ebay now.