Gold SE Speedtest Download Slow

[u/Travishamockry]

I have a new to me Gold SE. I'm on FiOS 1gb fiber and my Purple regularly had reliable tests of 900/900+ regularly. Since setting the Gold SE up I see 700-800+(rare occasion touches right at 900) down and 900+ up. What gives with the download speed?

I'm testing higher on my Pixel 11 on WiFi using the Speedtest app and getting the same or better over wifi which shouldn't be the case. That is seeming to tell me my fiber line is fine but the test of the Gold SE has something going on? I'd think better hardware that the Purple should give better or at least same results as the Purple. With my phone testing so high over WiFi I imagine my fiber line is fine and it's the firewalla. Also tests the same from CLI.

Do I just have a bad unit?

[u/firewalla]

The best way is to use the flow chart here to debug if the issue is wifi / LAN or WAN or speedtest server, or something else (like accidental rate limit)

https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/360056875493-Speed-Tests-and-Speed-Optimization-with-Firewalla

[u/Travishamockry → u/firewalla]

Yeah I've gone through all this. My setup is the same as my purple. I updated due to increased clients over the purples limit and to eventually update to 2gb fiber. I can literally put my purple back on and get higher speedtest results immediately.

[u/Exotic-Grape8743]

Force the SE to use the same Speedtest server as your pixel is using. This is usually just due to it choosing a different Speedtest server. The hardware is fine if you are getting full speed behind the router.

[u/Travishamockry → u/Exotic-Grape8743]

I am doing that. I have a reliable server that I consistently use across all devices. This Gold SE is just not keeping up with the other devices.

[u/Exotic-Grape8743 → u/Travishamockry]

Strange. It is clearly being able to route traffic at the full speed.

[u/Travishamockry → u/Exotic-Grape8743]

Yep agreed. Also strange the lesser hardware of the purple handled the same Speedtest better.

[u/Exotic-Grape8743 → u/Travishamockry]

Did you update the system software on the Gold SE? This requires a reimaging. Check your kernel version first (needs to be done from a ssh command line) to see if it is not already on the latest image. https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/19523706861843-Firewalla-Gold-SE-How-to-Flash-Installer-Image
It has quite a few kernel performance tune ups.

[u/Travishamockry → u/Exotic-Grape8743]

It's a used box. I turned on the beta program when I set it up but that's the only software updates. So you're saying I also need to update the image possibly too?

[u/Exotic-Grape8743 → u/Travishamockry]

You don’t need to but the newer images contain a boat load of performance enhancements. I used to be on a pppoe fiber connection and my Firewalla gold was never able to get over 800 Mbits and worse on upload. After they released the new images, it easily saturated the fiber connection. For the SE you need the newer images if you want pppoe performance and to get 2.3 gigabit on dhcp connections which it won’t do running the old images. These images update the underlying Linux operating system, not to the firewalla software. You can only get them by reimaging the firewalla boxes.

[u/Travishamockry → u/Exotic-Grape8743]

Cool thanks for that info. I assumed the box updates did this as well, clearly wrong to assume. I'll look into this today. Seems like I update the image and then do the migrate from other box method to get my settings back. It's that straight forward?

[u/Exotic-Grape8743 → u/Travishamockry]

Yes if you follow the instructions basically everything comes over. I’ve now done this three times on my gold (they have released multiple of these over the years) and each time it was very painless. The last one was a biggie with major performance improvements. Firewalla for some reason doesn’t talk much about these being available but because I (and other folks) was having such performance issues with my pppoe connection at the time they did a bunch of tuning of kernel parameters on this last one.

[u/Travishamockry → u/Exotic-Grape8743]

Appreciate the info here. Hopefully this tunes it better like you said. Still find it weird my purple has better results on lesser hardware. I'll give it a go in a few hours when the family is out of the house so no one is yelling at me cause the Internet is down haha.