strange "throttling" issue with pf on xDSL connection

[Daniel Hartmeier]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 05:42:19PM +0200, Patrick Proniewski wrote:

> While playing around with systat I've discovered that the transfer  
> rate can be as low as 20 KB/s and as high as 850 KB/s on a single  
> download from http://test-debit.free.fr, but the mean value will  
> always be around 120-150 KB/s when pf is active. From one sample to  
> another (every second), the transfer rate is very erratic.
> If I disable pf on ext_if (set skip on $ext_if), the transfer rate  
> reaches quickly 850 KB/s and is almost stable. It decreases to  
> 400-450 KB/s for 1 or 2 seconds, 3 or 4 times per minute.

Enable pf debug logging (pfctl -xm), note output of pfctl -si, reproduce
the problem. Then run pfctl -si again. See /var/log/messages for lines
from pf. Post all three outputs ;)

Daniel