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andrei123
andrei123
New Member
December 23, 2014
Solved

Throughput problem with FGT 60D and PPPoE connection

  • December 23, 2014
  • 12 replies
  • 158972 views

The unit is set up with FortiOS 5.2.2 and has the wan1 port connected to the ISP with PPPoE (1Gb subscription).

If I connect the laptop or computer directly with PPPoE to the ISP I get ~800 Mb throughput (tested with speedtest, ISP's own speedtest and torrents). When I connect the Fortigate unit the throughput is capped at ~190 Mb (~140 with 5.2.5) and the unit stops responding (CPU 100%).

I tried the following configurations:

- internal lan in switch mode or in interface mode (hardware switch)

- tried with firmwares 5.0.10 and 5.2.1

The MTU for the PPPoE is 1492 so I also tried with mtu-overrride 1492 and still the same

The unit behaves the same in every situation high cpu and capped througput.

All the UTM features are turned off. All the tests are done with the basic configuration, just a policy from internal to wan1..

Also another strange thing is that when I test with the download limited ~100Mb so that the unit doesn't completely freeze I can see from the top command that the CPU is 50% hogged by the system, however there is no process in the list with that high of a load (if you add all the processes they add up to max 10%).

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated ..

 

I also noticed that the traffic is not going through the NP4Lite so I guess the 'Supports firewall acceleration across all packet sizes for maximum throughput' on the FGT 60D spec sheet on Fortinet website might be false advertising.

 

Update: There is no way that I found for a 60D  to reach gigabit speeds on PPPoE connection. Max throughput is 140 Mb.

A workaround is to have another router in front of the 60D to do the PPPoe connection ( i got a Ubiquiti Edgemax Lite router for 100E that works amazing)

 

Best regards,

Andrei

 

 

 

Best answer by freb

I had the same issue with the 60d and gigabit internet with PPPOE. I never found a good solution, so I decided to upgrade. After weighing my options, sticking with an upgraded Fortigate seemed like the best bet (as opposed to going with a PFSense box, which would probably have been at least as expensive, or a Ubiquity EdgeRouter). My only question was would the 60e be able to handle the traffic.

 

I ended up going with the 80e for the extra ports, but the 60e should perform similarly. And yes, this device can more than handle PPPOE encapsulation and hit gigabit speeds without coming close to maxing out.

 

Hope that helps anyone considering an upgrade but not wanting to because they don't know if it will solve their bottleneck.

12 replies

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dklane012
dklane012
New Member
November 9, 2015

Well, I installed a C1100Z from CenturyLink and put the FG 60D WAN Port in the DMZ and speed tests are now 900Mbps down and 900Mbps Up.

 

Problem solved.  It is apparently the PPPoE overhead on the 60D - definitely disappointed in that since CenturyLink and many other telco FTTH implementations are using PPPoE to authenticate, but so be it.

 

It works, I get the speed and the security and if one fails, I guess I have a backup now.

emnoc
emnoc
New Member
November 10, 2015

I bet if you get away from the 60D and had a bigger security-fw that has more cpu, the peformance will improve. The additional adding and removing the pppoe header is probably being off-load to the cpu so this directly impacts performance when you run PPPoE. Any traffic that's punted to CPU is directly impacted by any interrupts that the cpu is handling. The same is true with a smaller SOHO cisco router for example.

 

dklane012
dklane012
New Member
November 10, 2015

But, in this space - SOHO - a lot of fiber providers are using PPPoE for gigabit.  If you can offload PPPoE in the $99 telco router, I'd pay that much more to include it in this level of appliance.

shuri
shuri
New Member
March 9, 2021

Hi Andrei,

 

I have A FG60D with version 6.0.11 and PPoE, and it's work like a charm for speed. Maybe consider to update ?

 

https://docs.fortinet.com...es/760203/introduction

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