March 19, 2026
Speed limit meme unlocked
OpenBSD: PF queues break the 4 Gbps barrier
OpenBSD breaks 4 Gbps wall — cheers, eye-rolls, and a FreeBSD smackdown
TLDR: OpenBSD removed a silent 4 Gbps cap in its firewall settings by moving to 64‑bit values, so high-speed configs up to 999G now work as intended. Commenters are split between applause and skepticism, arguing over real-world performance and reviving the OpenBSD vs FreeBSD, single-threaded vs multithreaded showdown.
OpenBSD just yanked the speed limiter off its firewall traffic cop, fixing a hidden bug that capped bandwidth settings around 4 Gbps. A fresh patch swaps 32‑bit numbers for 64‑bit ones, so those 10G, 25G, even “999G” configs finally behave like you’d expect. It even cleans up a display glitch that made high speeds look wrong in the stats. The plan: land it by Friday, and yes, your old setups still work.
Cue the comment cage match. One user dropped the classic “640K should be enough for anyone” meme to roast the “999G is enough” claim—translation: famous last words. The top worry? Does the firewall actually keep up at those speeds, or did we just bump the sticker on the box. “Can PF really shape above 4 Gbps?” asks a skeptic, and suddenly everyone’s doing back-of-the-napkin math.
Then the spicy bit: the OpenBSD vs FreeBSD throwdown. A FreeBSD fan barges in with “PF is still single‑threaded on OpenBSD,” suggesting it’s fine for home internet but not for big‑boy datacenters. Another commenter wonders why this limit lasted so long if 2.5G is on cheap gear now—does anyone run OpenBSD at 10G? Meanwhile, someone just typed “dsa” and vanished, which… mood. Donations to the OpenBSD Foundation encouraged, popcorn optional.
Key Points
- •A 32-bit limitation in OpenBSD’s HFSC scheduler capped PF queue bandwidth at ~4.29 Gbps, causing wrap-around and unpredictable behavior at higher settings.
- •A patch widens HFSC bandwidth fields to 64-bit integers, removing the cap and enabling correct shaping on modern high-speed interfaces.
- •The diff also fixes a pftop(1) display bug that misreported bandwidth values above 4 Gbps.
- •PF now accepts bandwidth values up to 999G; configurations below 4G remain compatible without changes.
- •Editors note indicates the patch is expected to be committed by Friday, March 20, 2026, with calls for testing -current and supporting the OpenBSD Foundation.