u/DisastrousWelcome710

Hello everyone, I have moved from using commercially available routers to building my OPNsense router using an SFF PC with dual 10G card (WAN/LAN) and I have been quite happy with OPNsense and the flexibility it provides.

I have, however, noticed quite a bit of throttling on certain websites, like YouTube and Facebook where connection may get dropped, or just refuse to load then load fine after refresh.

My current set up:

VLANs: I have 4 VLANs (Admin, General, Guest, Webserver). I have two managed switches that are also configured to support those VLANs and no device on the whole network is VLAN aware as it is all handled by switches/router.

Unbound DNS: listens on port 53 across my 4 VLAN interfaces (WAN interface excluded). It is set up to use DNS over TLS with DNSSEQ enabled. I had Quad9 servers initially, but found them very unreliable and currently using Cloudfair and Google as secondary.

DNSMASQ: for local queries only (listens on port 53053) to resolve local network hostnames, queries targeting my router hostname will be forwarded to this by Unbound.

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I previously had many issues with Unbound timing out and thrashing, and if a sudden rush of DNS queries came from a device, Unbound would just stop responding altogether. I am talking about ~500 queries/s causing the service to shutdown. I have since expanded the cache size and the threads available, and stress tested the service by running +30k queries per second and it handled the test very gracefully and kept running just fine.

I also had issues with blocklists blocking many things I use, so they have now been completely disabled.

Last but not least, I do have several domains hosted and exposed using my public IP. That includes a mailserver, and several other domains/subdomains.

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With that in mind, I run into many issues with YouTube specifically, where it would disconnect completely, refuse loading comment/chat sections, constantly saying "Action not allowed", and this behavior is the same across all devices on the network, and on different YouTube accounts. Whenever I connect to VPN, those issues disappear for YouTube.

I have tried forcing DHCP release from my ISP by spoofing a MAC address for my WAN interface, it worked and I was able to get new IP (my ISP does not allow static IPs). That resolved the issue with YouTube for a few days, then it went back exactly to how it was before.

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I have thought of different reasons that could cause the issue:

1. Misconfiguration in OPNsense on my end causing the behavior after some time passes.
2. YouTube flagging my IP and throttling it.
3. ISP is throttling my traffic to YouTube, given that is my most visited website in my network.
4. My IP is being blacklisted on CDN level? Maybe the fact I have several sites hosted on the same IP is causing some issues flagging my IP in CDNs? I do know I am on two blacklists: RATS Dyna and Spamhaus ZEN, both of which list all DHCP ranges from commercial ISPs as blocked to prevent mail delivery. I could not find my IP blacklisted in other blacklists.

My IP is NOT behind GCNAT, my router WAN address is the same address exposed to the public.

My network devices are not compromised nor does any device act as part of any botnet, I do monitor my traffic.

I have been trying for months to determine what is happening and I am at a loss. I would like to rule out OPNsense from the equation, any suggestions to help me do that will be greatly appreciated.

Note: I will be changing ISP soon, and getting 2 static IPs, one will be dedicated specifically for my mailserver.

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Edit: as a previous suspecion of mine was around the state of the connections, I decided to go back to that line of enquiry. I manually set WAN interface MTU to 1500, and MSS to 1440. Then I went to my General VLAN Firewall rules and changed State Type to "Sloppy State" instead of "Keep State" and immediately noticed the bad connectivity issues were gone. Of course this could be anecdotal, so I will be testing it out and I will update the post accordingly.

For reference, my Firewall rules are as follows:

Admin VLAN -> Can initiate to anywhere, nothing can initiate connections to it, they may only respond.

General VLAN -> Can initiate to Guest/Webserver VLANs, they can't initiate back.

Guest VLAN -> Can initiate to Webserver VLAN, Webserver can't initiate back.

Webserver -> Strictly internet traffic, cannot communicate to any internal VLANs, except if it's responding.

Looking for 2 Nvidia 3090 cards (non Ti). Can do Paypal invoice or local cash. Looking to pay around $1450. Post down to let me know if you have offers.

So I'm building a PC for relatives who are looking to get their first desktop system and they don't have experience building and optimizing for performance.

I was able to collect parts for the build from different places and here's the build summary:

CPU: Core Ultra 9 285k

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z890 AORUS PRO ICE

RAM: Crucial Pro Overclocking 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5-6400 PC5-51200 CL32

GPU: Zotac 5070ti SFF OC

PSU: MSI MPG A850GS PCIE5, Fully Modular Gaming 850W

SSDs: 1x Crucial P3 NVME 1TB, and 1x Crucial MX500 SATA

I'm aware SSDs are the weak point of the build, which is why I'm not charging them for either (I have a lot of components and I'm providing the SSDs for free, given I got the P3 for free, and the MX500 for $50)

They wanted something very powerful on a budget, and in their country these specs are $3700.

Given their use-case is just gaming, some CAD design and rendering, some video editing (not professional), and given the fact they're not savvy in this area, I decided to meet the budget by cutting cost in other components:

Case: DEEPCOOL CC560 V2

CPU cooler: Thermalright PS120SE

Case fans: Thermalright TL-C12CE

The build (excluding the SSDs) comes around to $1775, tax included.

The configuration will be 5 intake fans, 3 exhaust so it doesn't accumulate dust inside.

Now I plan to limit the 285k to 125W profile. And I do not plan on overclocking the RAM anymore than the XMP sets them to (6400MHz).

I'm also conflicted on whether to limit the 5070Ti to 250W.

Finally, I'm contemplating whether I should install Windows on the MX500 or the P3. The random accesses handling of the MX500 is far superior to the P3 due to the DRAM it has.

The primary goal is for the system to be as stable as possible, and last for many years to come without needing maintenance on their end. Especially because I won't be able to troubleshoot for them once it's in their possession.

Any insights on this plan will be greatly helpful.

Edit:

Thank you everyone for the greatly helpful insights. I ultimately decided to make the following modifications:

1. Instead of 285k, I am going for 270k Plus to save $160
2. Instead of PS120SE I am going for PS120D Snow with 2150RPM fans.
3. I will try not capping either CPU nor GPU and monitor thermals, if it's all stable I'll maintain that. If I see an issue, I will play around with different configurations to find the sweetspot.
4. Instead of the Crucial P3 (DRAM-less, QLC), I am going with Micron 2300 (with DRAM and TLC, just like the MX500).

Total actual price for me is $1765 (with SSDs, which are a gift from me), on them it's $1635.

So I have a Proxmox set up on my server with 16 bays for drives, all of which are filled.

My configuration has first two slots with 900GB SAS drives, which are set in raid0 configuration and house the Proxmox instance itself. Needless to say, this was an awful decision on my part many moons ago when I did not know any better, and I kept building on top of it and now gotten to the mess I am in. Anyhow, those drives are failing and one of them is reaching critical state.

I would like to replace them, but I cannot do it one by one due to the raid0 configuration. However, this is where I run into a bit of an issue.

The slots 3-6 house 4x 2TB SAS SSDs, those run RaidZ in a pool where my VMs sit and operate. The remaining 10 slots house 1.2TB SAS HDD drives also in RaidZ in a pool, this is purely a backup pool and never used for any VMs.

Given I have those two pools, is it safe to just reinstall Proxmox in a new config? I am going to replace the two drives in Raid0 config with two 1TB SSDs and I wanted to run them in RaidZ as well, therefore I would backup my Proxmox configs first, then remove the 2 existing drives, and install the SSDs, and boot Proxmox ISO to create a pool out of the new SSDs and install Proxmox on it.

I just wanted to know the effects of this procedure on my other pools. If my understanding is correct, the procedure should not have any effect on the pools given ZFS, unlike other Raid configs, actually resides on the physical disks forming the pool, therefore all I'll need is to import those pool in the freshly installed Proxmox. Is this a correct understanding?

So I have a Kenmore fridge with an air tower part W10396926, it is broken and has missing pieces, the frost builds up quickly and it's out of control. I looked everywhere for the part and nobody sells it, unfortunately. I would like to build a new one, is that possible? What would I need to do so? I was thinking of using 2inch insulation foam boards (the green ones) and carve it to shape but I am really unsure how to proceed. I am really trying to avoid paying $600 for a new fridge because a $20 part has no replacement.

Hello everyone,

I plan to start working on a new project for my homelab, and I am interested in hosting my own AI model, specifically Gemma 4 for the time being.

Everything is really floating and I got nothing concrete going on. I am aware of the RAM shortage and inflated prices, but I do have 96GB of DDR4 RDIMM backup that I am not currently using anywhere, and I do have 64GB of DDR4 UDIMM that I am also not using anywhere. I also have 2 sticks of 1TB NVME that I am not using either.

I have a Tesla M40, and two Tesla K80s (I am just mentioning those for completeness, I know they are quite useless especially as they are out of support and have been for a while).

I do also have two Xeon Gold 6132 processors which are not in use currently, but they are part of a 1U rack that I would like to keep for future use as a cloud given its high capacity for HDDs/SSDs (when prices come down, copium)

Anyhow, I was thinking of buying a near barebone T7920 or equivalent HP workstation tower and put 2-3 Tesla M40 GPUs in it, alongside 96GB RAM and two processors that perform similarly to the Xeon Gold 6132 processors.

My use-case is going to be primarily 4-6 clients max concurrently, but most likely it's going to be 1 or none.

I was thinking of buying 2 more Tesla M40 cards given they are quite cheap, and workstation with no RAM and no storage (so I can just whatI have and avoid the current price inflation).

My budget is more or less not settled, but given the hardware I already have, I'd like something less than $1000 total.

I am quite open to ideas and suggestions and probably even increasing the budget if I need to. I am not looking to do this project tomorrow, but sometime before the end of the year.

Any information would be greatly helpful.