Does ipfire Benefit from Multiple Cores?

Hardware
1

Is ipfire multithreaded? If I’m building a DIY firewall, should I buy the fastest clock speed I can find or go with multiple cores?

2

You would need to define your usage in more detail, in order to get a suitable answer. In particular:

  • network speed
  • addons deployed
3

I’m looking to get 10G throughput (in one interface, out the other) when downloading large ZIP files. There will be no special addons. It’s basically just for uploading and downloading files from Internet SFTP servers.

4

Oh, and some HTTPS (using a program like LogMeIn123 for remote access).

5

My experience using << 100 Mb/s won’t be relevant. Others having 2.5G cards might assist.

6

AFAIK IPFire benefits quite a lot from multiple cores.
I don’t remeber if PPPoE is still a single thread task or gain multithread for improving performance for faster connections.

7

A key thing to look for is that the Network cards you get have multiple queue capability.
I believe that it is called Receive-Side Scaling (RSS) and with that capability IPFire will be able to share the network traffic across multiple cores. Without that capability then all the network traffic from one nic will always only be on one core.

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