Questions about Bandwidth Control setup

[Jim.Alles]

I would expect CPU load to spike at 2 or less - just my experience with much less household activity.

Although this article doesn't address the issue directly, I am sorry I didn't think of this resource sooner:
http://wiki.untangle.com/index.php/NG_Firewall_Performance_Guide

Also, since I have never installed Spam Blocker, (Email settings apply only to the SMTP protocol) I didn't realize this:

My CPU load is always above 7. I still need to test for spam. What do I do?

Raising the number will allow you to test for spam, but will likely also increase the CPU load. If your CPU load is that high, that's an indication that your hardware may not be robust enough for your site. If your user count increased since you installed your server, or the volume of the internet traffic has increased substantially, this could be a cause. You may also have been spending as little for hardware as you could get away with. Regardless, you probably also are being impacted in other areas without realizing it. You should determine exactly what the hardware specs are on your server to determine whether you should supplement the existing hardware or replace it with something more robust.

from: http://wiki.untangle.com/index.php/S...hat_do_I_do.3F

[Synical]

Start shopping for hardware.

Untangle Employee comment please?

Thanks, I was starting to lean in this direction. Though the current build has done well over the past 4 years (and isn't "bad" now), the number of devices has almost doubled, and cutting the cable cord resulted in traffic increasing to 3 TB+ per month (according to Xfinity, we're already at 1.5 TB for August.)

Downside is, the next upgrade in the chute is my desktop, so I'll probably push a hardware refresh to September/October.

Upside is, I recently finished a new lab machine build, and have more than enough resources to run it as a VM in the short term. (evil nerd laugh, (tm))

What I'm currently looking at is an ASRock C3558, with an M.2 SSD and 16 GB of DDR4. WAN connection will be via 1000BASE-T module, with a 10G DAC (SFP+) to the switch on the internal side. I chose the ASRock since it will fit in my existing 1U case, and the Atom C3558 is comparable in power needs. I thought about waiting until OEM's had something with the newly released C3558R, but there isn't enough difference (spec wise) to justify waiting.

In the meantime, I'll go through the performance guide a few more times for tuning tips and to re-learn some things I hadn't realized I'd forgotten.

[1837]

Thank you very much for learning a lot of knowledge.