Comments on: Fix your BufferBloat and speed your Internet on your pfSense

By: Jed Davis

Jed Davis — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 15:59:19 +0000

I have been using m0n0wall, Opensense, and pfSense from day one of each. With pfSense I use both CE and Plus depending on need. There are two problems with this so called fix, that could not work (I tried to make sure). 1; it will never do any thing if your bandwidth never reaches what you pay for, so the triggers are never activated. 2; it WILL NOT WORK WITH CACHE, so if you run web cache and/or web filters to speed things up, the cache is going to fight with the limiter from within the network. I think you should tell people about these downfalls.

By: Thiago Crepaldi

Thiago Crepaldi — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:54:54 +0000

Thank you all for reporting my typo on the In / Out setting for the queue creation. My WAN connection is a symmetric fiber and I never noticed the bad config

By: Thiago Crepaldi

Thiago Crepaldi — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:53:44 +0000

In reply to S. Hey S, 1) for the queue creation, there is no bandwidht, but a bug on the pfSense. You have to click on "WAN_Down" on the left menu before clicking on the "Add new queue". Then the correct dialog will appear 2) Yes, you are right. I have reversed the In / Out setting. I have a symmetric fiber and didn't catch this earlier :)

By: chicho fabrega

chicho fabrega — Sat, 02 Oct 2021 03:01:05 +0000

One thing that needs to be fixed is in the last section, entitled “Create firewall rule to deploy BufferBloat fix”, under Edit Firewall Rule > “Direction: out” needs to be changed to” Direction: in”. Per, the instructions inside of the pfsense: “If creating a floating rule, if the direction is In then the same rules apply, if the direction is Out the selections are reversed, Out is for incoming and In is for outgoing.” (OR use the left dropdown for WAN_Up_Queue and the right for WAN_Down_Queue)

My connection is async – 300Mbps up / 50Mbps down. When I used “Direction: out” my download speed suddenly became limited to 95% of 50Mbps for downloads.

Other than that, great article. I truly appreciate the knowledge share.

By: S

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 20:40:20 +0000

Following up in case it helps someone:

(1) Turned out to be a GUI bug in pfSense. The key to avoid this is: after creating a limiter and clicking Save, do not immediately click Add New Queue. First, *click the limiter you just made in the upper left corner just above the “+ New Limiter” button*, then scroll to the bottom and click Add New Queue.

If you do this correctly, after it’s done the limiters should have the queues nested under them, like:

+WAN_Down
|—WAN_Down_Queue
+WAN_Up
|—WAN_Up_Queue

I figured it out by following the directions here (slides 5-11): https://www.slideshare.net/NetgateUSA/pfsense-244-short-topic-miscellany-pfsense-hangout-august-2018

By: S

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 19:34:12 +0000

Thanks for your instructions! A couple of notes that may help others:

1) pfSense 2.5.2 is requiring me to provide a bandwidth specification for queue creation. I wasn’t sure what to put there. Suggestions?

2) After applying the changes I found that my download speed (normally much larger then upload) dropped to match my upload speed. In the firewall rule I then reversed the queue order from what you wrote, so it’s like this:

In / Out pipe:
Select WAN_Up_Queue for In (left dropdown) and;
Select WAN_Down_Queue for Out (right dropdown)

This resolved the bandwidth hit.

By: cd311

cd311 — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 08:00:54 +0000

Hi, are you sure the down queue in and up queue out in the firewall rule is right?

I just tested your tutorial and I had to switch it else my download rate would go way down.

Also another tutorial on the net https://lawrencesystems.com/how-to-solve-pfsense-bufferbloat-with-a-codelq-fq_codel-limiter-in-2-4-4/ switches the up queue in the in side and the down queue in the out side.

By: Lee

Lee — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 13:08:14 +0000

I think your “In/Out Pipe” settings are reversed. Per the description for that setting in pfsense:
“If creating a floating rule, if the direction is In then the same rules apply, if the direction is Out the selections are reversed, Out is for incoming and In is for outgoing.”
The created rule uses the “Out” direction. It’s easily recognized when your download speed is clipped to your upload max 🙂

By: Jan T.

Jan T. — Mon, 03 May 2021 13:51:08 +0000

Great fix – great description, Thiago – thank you!
Yet I stumbled upon an issue: on the very last step ‘Defining a floating firewall rule’ you specify an ‘out’ direction but when it comes to selecting the queues, pfSense tells us:
‘In / Out pipe
Choose the Out queue/Virtual interface only if In is also selected. The Out selection is applied to traffic leaving the interface where the rule is created, the In selection is applied to traffic coming into the chosen interface.
If creating a floating rule, if the direction is In then the same rules apply, if the direction is *Out* the selections are *reversed,* Out is for incoming and In is for outgoing.’
The original setup had left me with a download rate of 5 Mbit/s – when I changed the direction to ‘In’ everything was fine – but I had to choose 70% of available download bandwith for best results.
Cheers, Jan

By: Thiago Crepaldi

Thiago Crepaldi — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 01:10:19 +0000

Do you happen to have the original post? I do have a commercial VPN on my lab and everything is working fine with the bloat fix