If only there were a special path like, oh I don't know, /dev for device handles.

ELI5?

I think I speak for everyone when I say

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Ah, didn't realize pfSense is the OS, not something that runs on linux. My command examples won't work for you.

So my first question is how can it be that my little mini J1900 Celeron (2 GHz) with 4 GB RAM cannot handle this bandwith?

• check ethtool for link speed: sudo ethtool enp2s0 | egrep 'Speed|Duplex' Your device name may be different from enp2s0. use ip link to see all devices. if it's not

Speed: 1000Mb/s
Duplex: Full

then that's probably a bad sign.

• that is a 10 year old celeron processor. celeron were the budget (a.k.a. cheapest, slowest) class processor at the time. it's quite likely that it cannot keep up.
• If you still think it's not CPU directly, use iotop to see if you have I/O bottleneck.

• KHAAAAAAAAN, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!
• Play it, Sam, you piece of shit. (no one ever says "play it again, Sam")
• Never tell me the odds you piece of shit!
• I want you to hit me as hard as you can, you piece of shit.
• Good morning Vietnam, you piece of shit!
• I love the smell of Napalm in the morning you piece of shit!
• You come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married and you ask me to do murder, for money, you piece of shit?
• Go ahead, make my day you piece of shit.
• Open the pod bay doors, HAL you piece of shit.
• I am serious. And don't call me Shirley you piece of shit.
• You're gonna need a bigger boat, you piece of shit.

Charlton Heston Bonus Round:

• LET MY PEOPLE GO YOU PIECE OF SHIT!
• YOU DAMN DIRTY APES, YOU BLEW IT ALL TO HELL YOU PIECE OF SHIT!
• SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE YOU PIECE OF SHIT!
• You may conquer the land, you may slaughter the people. But that is not the end. We will rise again, you piece of shit.

dmesg | less should allow you to scroll the output. You should use forward slash in less to search for the devices (hit enter), see if the modules are being loaded or if there some errors.

check lsmod before and after see what kernel modules are changing.

also look at dmesg for interesting kernel messages as you attempt to use / not use the offending hardware.

tcpdump, wireshark can capture packets.

haproxy can be a proxy of many networking protocols

mitmproxy can help see encrypted traffic by acting as a literal man in the middle.

ssh with certain parameters can become a SOCKS5 proxy to encrypt and tunnel traffic out of a hostile network

they can steal your fucking house if you don't follow their rules

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qrizmAo17Os

Put a smile on your face Ten miles wide Looks so good Bring a tear to your eye Sweet cherry pie

There, their its are not it's they're its. It's as simple as "its", as it's the its it's.