Building a pfSense Box

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'That VDSL Cat'
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#1660585 29-Oct-2016 18:21

pfsense is a great platform.

as others have mentioned, power to performance wise, your best off picking up something from the baytrail way (J1900)

Personally i prefer to run my pfsense boxes under ESXi.. run a monitoring and ELK stack alongside for digging deeper where required. (Baytrail hardware will not run pfsense without doing setup over serial)

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dauckland

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#1660586 29-Oct-2016 18:23

I recommend this:

Router box: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019Z8T9J0
Disk (60GB): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00COFMPAM
RAM (8GB in a single stick): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006YG8X9Y

Runs gigabit fibre and aupports around 50 devices at my office.

Damian

Ipv89

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#1660588 29-Oct-2016 18:40

dauckland: I recommend this:

Router box: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019Z8T9J0
Disk (60GB): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00COFMPAM
RAM (8GB in a single stick): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006YG8X9Y

Runs gigabit fibre and aupports around 50 devices at my office.

Damian

looking at the specs I dont think that would support 1gbps. its $150 nzd shipped, have you used this before?

Mike

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#1660595 29-Oct-2016 19:03

Ipv89:

dauckland: I recommend this:

Router box: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019Z8T9J0
Disk (60GB): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00COFMPAM
RAM (8GB in a single stick): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006YG8X9Y

Runs gigabit fibre and aupports around 50 devices at my office.

Damian

looking at the specs I dont think that would support 1gbps. its $150 nzd shipped, have you used this before?

Personally for futureproofing ild aim slightly higher.

that particular cpu im not a fan of though.

my machine currently is a Athlon II X2 245 (3ghz dual core) and that is slightly lacking in power at times (i dont purely route on my router though.... and it is power hungry)

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Ipv89

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#1660636 29-Oct-2016 19:38

It is starting to look like a good pfsense build will be closer to $500 - $600 to match the performance of the ERL

Mike

Jase2985

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#1660652 29-Oct-2016 20:13

why not just get a decent router?

if you already have all the kit for it then it may make sense but if your buying it all it may not

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Ipv89

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#1660653 29-Oct-2016 20:15

Jase2985:
why not just get a decent router?

if you already have all the kit for it then it may make sense but if your buying it all it may not

Most routers worth getting are around the $300 $400 mark and cant compete with the ERL and. Good access point $100 or so more and I can build a decent pfsense box that even $700 routers can't touch.

Mike

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#1660656 29-Oct-2016 20:18

heaps of devices that will get the max out of your connection for cheap, along with giving you good wifi

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=158&topicid=204550

you still need a decent AP with your PFsense box and thats a couple of hundred right there

macuser

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#1660660 29-Oct-2016 20:25

I managed to do some testing for you but unfortunately it was only getting up to around 72MBytes per second between my gaming PC with Intel Gbit and an Atom machine with a Realtek Gbit chipset - through the router.

I was a bit sad about that as the router was displaying only about 1% CPU usage with that traffic (all UTM features disabled) so I figured maybe there was some additional configuration required to get it up to 1Gbit.

I thought I would throw the Atom with the realtek chip back onto the Gbit switch, and perform the test on the local subnet...This time I was hitting 73-74MBytes per second. I think the realtek chipset isn't up to scratch...So I'll either need to put a higher performance desktop to do the iPerf3 tests again or just wait for fibre and run a speedtest.

macuser

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#1660662 29-Oct-2016 20:31

My box was $400 + the intel nic I purchased ages ago off eBay. Then add $600 for drives and a raid controller and I have spent around $1000 on this project :)...Oh add to that the 10Gbit cards and the cable that will arrive next month... total is $1250

I already had a EA6700 Linksys Router/AP so I'm using that as my AP.

This for box for me is my

NAS

uTorrent Machine

VPN Server

Media Server

Router

Firewall

Terminal Server for my billing software

A fun project

cynnicallemon

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#1660663 29-Oct-2016 20:32

macuser:

I think the realtek chipset isn't up to scratch...So I'll either need to put a higher performance desktop to do the iPerf3 tests again or just wait for fibre and run a speedtest.

That's why you invest in a server grade dual or quad port Intel NIC especially for pfSense like I suggested.

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macuser

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#1660664 29-Oct-2016 20:33

cynnicallemon:

macuser:

I think the realtek chipset isn't up to scratch...So I'll either need to put a higher performance desktop to do the iPerf3 tests again or just wait for fibre and run a speedtest.

That's why you invest in a server grade dual or quad port Intel NIC especially for pfSense like I suggested.

I have a I350-T4 in the router, but in the atom machine I was using on the other side to simulate wan throughput only had a realtek chipset.

cynnicallemon

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#1660665 29-Oct-2016 20:35

ah okay :)

Ipv89

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#1660952 30-Oct-2016 15:14

I decided to just take the easy route and grabbed a nighthawk R7000 and wow is it disappointing. I am getting around 600mps over Ethernet. I was getting 950 with the crappy Vodafone router

Mike

macuser

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#1660956 30-Oct-2016 15:21

Alright, I have some stats for you.

SMB transfer no threat management running 192.168.1.0/24 -> 10.0.0.0/24. Solid 113MBps.

SMB transfer threat management on (Intrusion protection only) with PC in power save mode 192.168.1.0 -> 10.0.0.0/24. Varying between 25-45MBps.

SMB transfer threat management on (Intrusion protection only) with PC in high performance mode 192.168.1.0 -> 10.0.0.0/24. Static at 85MBps

Tried each test multiple times, and it was very consistent. I'm actually probably fine with intrusion protection on with power save mode - I don't estimate I will often see general browsing traffic coming in at above the 25-45MBps. I could also turn IPS off all together but where's the fun in that?

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