Building a pfSense Box

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › Building a pfSense Box

Ipv89

115 posts

Master Geek

#205094 29-Oct-2016 12:59

Hi All,

I am looking at building a pf sense box for use on the Vodafone Fiberx network. I am wanting the wan to be capable of 1gbps and all lan ports will of cause be 1gbps.

Any recommendations on hardware? I already have a spare 60GB SSD I can use for the build.

thanks in advance

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#1660393 29-Oct-2016 13:14

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I recommend trying the old or spare hardware you have before buying (unless unsuitable for some reason). Any intel CPU under 8 years old should be more than capable with PCIe slots.

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Ipv89

115 posts

Master Geek

#1660398 29-Oct-2016 13:17

the old old hardware I have is a video card (useless for this) and a ssd.

Dynamic

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#1660400 29-Oct-2016 13:19

lol that would be a limiting factor. What part of the country are you in?

"4 wheels move the body. 2 wheels move the soul."

“Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose.” Douglas Adams

Ipv89

115 posts

Master Geek

#1660402 29-Oct-2016 13:21

Im in Wellington

Zeon

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#1660411 29-Oct-2016 13:35

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Sure there are some people there with old hardware they could give you. Could give you something if you were in Auckland :S

Speedtest 2019-10-14

Ipv89

115 posts

Master Geek

#1660418 29-Oct-2016 14:04

Zeon:

Sure there are some people there with old hardware they could give you. Could give you something if you were in Auckland :S

Im more then happy to purchase or even accept free second hand hardware as long as its capable of gigabit wan. from my understanding just about any old dual core and a decent nic can provide this.

If I was looking at new i have estimated around $400

cynnicallemon

370 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1660421 29-Oct-2016 14:08

Dynamic: I recommend trying the old or spare hardware you have before buying (unless unsuitable for some reason). Any intel CPU under 8 years old should be more than capable with PCIe slots.

I would say an Intel i3 CPU and 4GB RAM.

For networking, forget any onboard network interface and go with a server class Intel dual (or quad) port NIC - note, the NIC must support the "em" FreeBSD Intel network driver.

meesham

929 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1660453 29-Oct-2016 15:41

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I have one of these on my way to me at the moment from Aliexpress.

I'm running of the older ones with pfsense at the moment and it does a decent job but I'm going to move that over to be my HTPC. There's some testing of it on Arstechnica here (my current one is similar to the Homebrew v1).

michaelmurfy

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#1660476 29-Oct-2016 15:48

How about This?

Reviews say it is capable to do Gigabit WAN and is quite cheap. Will use less power than a PC build.

Edit: @meesham bet me to it.

Kodiack

623 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1660510 29-Oct-2016 16:09

We're running pfSense off an old Core 2 Quad system with 4 GB RAM. It has one integrated Ethernet adapter and one PCIe add-on Ethernet adapter.

We're interested to see how it performs on gigabit come Monday. Wondering how it'll compare to the router that Vodafone will provide.

macuser

2120 posts

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#1660513 29-Oct-2016 16:11

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I have just done the same, except instead I went with a Server 2016 build with a Sophos UTM9 Firewall VM sitting on top of it.

The Sophos UTM is a great firewall/router OS for x86/x64. It's free and really user friendly.

I spent a lot of time reseaching the right Celeron board that would be up to the task of Gigabit UFB I get installed on monday coming.

I had a some criteria.

1. It needed to be low power - this was going to be running all day and night and I didn't want to both pay for expensive fibre, and an expensive power bill.

2. The platform needed to have at least 2x PCI-E 4X or 8X or 16X as I have a 4 port I350-T4 4 port Intel Nic I wanted to use, and for below, a 2x4 Mini SAS RAID CARD

3. It needed to support virtualisation so I was able to have both a Windows OS and a router OS sitting on the box. Windows for an old billing application I use and to be a NAS for the home.

4. It needed to be cheaper than buying a router, and a empty NAS.

I ended up not being able to find a Celeron board that suited my needs, none had that many PCI express slots nor an alternative like Dual INTEL Nics or RAID on motherboard. I also wanted to build it on labour weekend as a bit of a project so it being in stock was also required.

I ended up seeing what I could do around pricing for a Skylake platform. Interestingly you could buy a B150M motherboard and Pentium G4400 for less than the top tier Celeron board in stock (N3710) but you would get many more features.

So...

I put together a very low end Skylake build

Intel G4400 3.3Ghz dual core (includes crappy box cooler that is fine for this job)

Asrock B150 Pro4/Hyper

2x 4GB DDR4 2133Mhz

120GB Kingston SSD

Crapp4 400W PSU

Even Crappier mATX Case.

4x Seagate Baracuda 2TB 7200RPM HDD's

I added to this with my own

Intel I350-T4 off Ebay

Intel 2x4 port mini sas pci-e card off ebay + mini sas to 4 sata break out cable.

This has all gone together quite nicely. I am still using VDSL at the moment, but getting the Sophos up and running is a breeze, there is a little bit of learning how to get the nat working and there is no UPNP so you need to manually allow ports outgoing.

It's installed in my cupboard now, my fibre install is on Monday so with some configuration I will be able to give you some stats. I have also ordered two 10Gbit Mellanox ConnectX-2 Nics that I will use between this and my workstation for that 10000Mbps love.

Kodiack

623 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1660519 29-Oct-2016 16:26

@macuser: That's a beautiful system! How's pfSense been treating you in a mixed environment like that? I like running it on bare metal with nothing else, but we had it integrated into another server system momentarily. We found it to be messy and higher-maintenance, but it was nice only needing to worry about one box.

macuser

2120 posts

Uber Geek

#1660526 29-Oct-2016 16:43

Kodiack:

@macuser: That's a beautiful system! How's pfSense been treating you in a mixed environment like that? I like running it on bare metal with nothing else, but we had it integrated into another server system momentarily. We found it to be messy and higher-maintenance, but it was nice only needing to worry about one box.

It's actually running Sophos UTM 9 which I am trialing vs PfSense. If UTM wont allow me to get the throughput numbers I may switch to PFSense.

jeffreyh

49 posts

Geek

#1660531 29-Oct-2016 16:47

I got one of the 4 port Qotom mini pc so same spec with 4g ram it did wire speed @L1 between routed ports @1500 bytes around mid to late 800m @512 bytes. I'm using vyos on it testing between a couple of jdsus. Single iperf tcp stream is what I'd expect @around 940m. So seem like an OK option I did read somewhere the power supplies might be suspect but so far so good and easy replaced. Nice compact unit did get better performance out of it when I took it home and connected it in place of my home router on 100m connection.

Ipv89

115 posts

Master Geek

#1660576 29-Oct-2016 17:51

macuser:

I have just done the same, except instead I went with a Server 2016 build with a Sophos UTM9 Firewall VM sitting on top of it.

The Sophos UTM is a great firewall/router OS for x86/x64. It's free and really user friendly.

I spent a lot of time reseaching the right Celeron board that would be up to the task of Gigabit UFB I get installed on monday coming.

I had a some criteria.

1. It needed to be low power - this was going to be running all day and night and I didn't want to both pay for expensive fibre, and an expensive power bill.

2. The platform needed to have at least 2x PCI-E 4X or 8X or 16X as I have a 4 port I350-T4 4 port Intel Nic I wanted to use, and for below, a 2x4 Mini SAS RAID CARD

3. It needed to support virtualisation so I was able to have both a Windows OS and a router OS sitting on the box. Windows for an old billing application I use and to be a NAS for the home.

4. It needed to be cheaper than buying a router, and a empty NAS.

I ended up not being able to find a Celeron board that suited my needs, none had that many PCI express slots nor an alternative like Dual INTEL Nics or RAID on motherboard. I also wanted to build it on labour weekend as a bit of a project so it being in stock was also required.

I ended up seeing what I could do around pricing for a Skylake platform. Interestingly you could buy a B150M motherboard and Pentium G4400 for less than the top tier Celeron board in stock (N3710) but you would get many more features.

So...

I put together a very low end Skylake build

Intel G4400 3.3Ghz dual core (includes crappy box cooler that is fine for this job)

Asrock B150 Pro4/Hyper

2x 4GB DDR4 2133Mhz

120GB Kingston SSD

Crapp4 400W PSU

Even Crappier mATX Case.

4x Seagate Baracuda 2TB 7200RPM HDD's

I added to this with my own

Intel I350-T4 off Ebay

Intel 2x4 port mini sas pci-e card off ebay + mini sas to 4 sata break out cable.

This has all gone together quite nicely. I am still using VDSL at the moment, but getting the Sophos up and running is a breeze, there is a little bit of learning how to get the nat working and there is no UPNP so you need to manually allow ports outgoing.

It's installed in my cupboard now, my fibre install is on Monday so with some configuration I will be able to give you some stats. I have also ordered two 10Gbit Mellanox ConnectX-2 Nics that I will use between this and my workstation for that 10000Mbps love.

Thanks for all of that info, that is an awesome setup. Are you confident this will max a gigabit wan?

EDIT: Would something like this out perform an edge router lite?

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