I did some very unscientific testing today with a couple of machines. Things haven't been going my way in the virtualization department, so I decided why not try some tests for fun.
I was using 9.207, I think I grabbed it yesterday off the website. The machine behind the UTM is a Sony i7-740QM laptop with 8Gb RAM, SSD, and I think a Marvell GigE NIC. I have a Comcast 50/10 connection, and I have been running an EdgeRouter Lite for the past couple months. The Sony was plugged directly into the LAN side adapter, the cable modem the WAN. Cable modem was fully reset between machines.
Machine 1: Supermicro J1900 X10SBA-L, 8GB DDR3 RAM, dual on-board i210-AT NICs.
Machine 2: Dell T20 server, G3220, 8Gb ECC RAM, on-board i217.
The first test was to install Sophos on #1, which failed as expected due to the i210-series NICs. The install did not find them. So, I installed an Intel dual NIC with 82574's (4x PCIe) and disabled the onboard NICs. This worked, as expected.
I did a basic crash-configure, with IPS (no server signatures), application filtering, etc. Most of the features on.
The J1900 at first worked fanastic. The web interface was up the whole time, and always responsive. The first Speedtest.net test gave the typical 334ms ping, and I think mid-50's down and 11-12 up. The 15ms ping was consistent over several runs. I ran several other tests, Speakeasy, Comcast, and some others, and was getting a solid 50-55 download, with really very little CPU usage (according to the dashboard). I backed up the J1900's configuration before I shut it down.
Then I installed the same version on the T20, disabled the onboard i217 (I had previous issues with this card and the UTM), and used the same dual NIC. I imported the J1900's configuration so I would have the exact same setup. Performance actually went down dramatically at first--40Mb/s, and ping went up to the mid 500's. I also immediately saw the more erratic Speedtest results I'm used to. I ran some of the other testing sites as well, and it did eventually go faster, I think I was up to 45-50Mb/s. I can't remember as I wasn't writing down results, but I think I did finally get back to mid-50's.
So, I started the J1900 back up and did more testing, and was back into consistently mid-50's, with a few runs close to 60. I'm not convinced the J1900 was actually faster, or it was just the network. I really can't remember if I got back into the high speeds on the G3220 or not. I did the retest to see if it was more a network issue or not.
After the test, I plugged back into the ERL, and did a couple tests, with expected results. Consistently at 60Mb/s with 12Mb upload and 15-20ms pings. The ERL works well for what it does, although it has frustratingly slow DHCP.
Totally anecdotal and not very scientific. I should have documented more, but was just trying to get a feel for the differences between the two. My connection is probably not fast enough to make either machine really sweat.
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