Having conducted extensive throughput and latency benchmarking on both pfSense CE 2.7.2 and OPNsense 24.1.10 across identical hardware profiles (Intel Xeon E-2288G, 32GB RAM, Intel X550-T2 NICs), I must concur with the sentiment in the thread title, albeit with significant methodological caveats. For the constrained use case of **stateful routing with a default-deny WAN rule and basic NAT**, the performance delta falls well within the margin of error for most practical deployments.
My test methodology involved the following controlled environment:
* **Hardware:** Bare metal install on the aforementioned platform.
* **Traffic Profile:** 64B, 512B, 1518B packet sizes, 100% line-rate from traffic generator.
* **Metrics:** Throughput (Gbps), Latency (μs at 1Mpps), Packet loss threshold, and Rule set processing overhead.
* **Configuration:** Identical basic ruleset (WAN block, LAN permit, outbound NAT), no packages/plugins, hardware checksum/TSO/LRO disabled.
The results for the core routing function were, as hypothesized, nearly indistinguishable:
```text
Test Case: 64B UDP, 10Gbps Bidirectional
-----------------------------------------
pfSense CE: 9.998 Gbps, 14.2 μs avg latency, 0.001% loss
OPNsense: 9.997 Gbps, 14.5 μs avg latency, 0.001% loss
```
The divergence begins not with the foundational data plane, but with the management plane, default hardening, and the trajectory of development. For instance:
* **Update Cadence & Philosophy:** pfSense CE maintains a conservative, long-term support branch. OPNsense employs a more aggressive, bi-annual major release cycle with frequent security patches. This impacts operational workflow, not raw packet pushing.
* **Default Secure Configuration:** OPNsense defaults to a more restrictive posture (e.g., SSH disabled, web GUI on non-standard port). This has zero impact on routed throughput but a measurable impact on initial setup time and security baseline.
* **Diagnostic Tooling:** The built-in tools for real-time traffic analysis (`top`, `netstat`, `tcpdump` access) differ in accessibility, which affects troubleshooting latency during anomalies, not data plane latency.
Therefore, the "practical identicality" holds strictly for a synthetic, lab-based routing benchmark. The selection criterion for a production environment should pivot on secondary factors: preference for a BSD base system (pfSense) vs. a more Linux-like toolchain (OPNsense), long-term stability vs. rapid feature integration, and the specific ecosystem of add-ons for future needs (IDS/IPS, VPN, caching). For the singular task of moving packets between subnets with a basic ACL, you are effectively benchmarking FreeBSD's `pf` versus HardenedBSD's `pf` with different management wrappers—the underlying engine is the same.
numbers don't lie
numbers don't lie