pfsense v. ipcop

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chevrolux

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#90648 26-Sep-2011 21:01

Hi everyone,
Im have bought a $15 computer and am going to run one of these two firewalls. Just after some thought provoking discussion on the two. The only thing I really want to be able to do is VPN in to home to access files. The other stuff these firewalls do is just a bonus to me.
What are you running?
Why did you choose it?
What kind of modem are you running with it? (is it worth getting a Draytek to do pppoa to pppoe?)
What sort of set up, in terms of hardware, do you use for accessing stuff remotely?
Have you used the BLUE/ORANGE networks in ipcop? (is it worth setting up or do red & green do the trick)
Ideally I would like to run on a usb/flash card. Reading over the ipcop stuff they only support flash cards whereas pfsense boots from usb drives. This isnt a defining factor though as the box is will be away from civilization so wont be a bother if its noisey.
There are just so many things to think about and I dont know enough to make an informed decision.

Discuss away....

Zeon

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#526013 26-Sep-2011 22:18

We run our entire organization on pfsense as virtual machines (7 pfsense routers running 10TB+ a month). It's brilliant, never had a problem.

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froob

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#526024 26-Sep-2011 22:33

I'm running pfsense at home on an ALIX 2D13 with a Draytek Vigor 120 as the modem. Works really well, but probably overkill for a home connection...

mastapenguin

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#526046 27-Sep-2011 08:01

I also run pfsense on an Alix 2D3 with a Draytek Vigor 120 modem. Pfsense has had no problems (except 100% cpu utilization when I turned on NTPD but I think that's a bug with the ntp daemon.)

@Zeon
What is your virtualization platform? Before I got the Alix I considered virtualizing pfsense on the home server since I couldn't justify running a 100W+ P4 era machine 24/7. Do you experience any increased jitter or lag when using virtualized pfsense?

Zeon

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#526076 27-Sep-2011 10:08

We are virtualizing on ESXi 4.1. It's very important to use the e1000 network adapters but once chosen you can expect 300mbps+ throughput.

We are using a mixture of socket 1156, 1155 and 1366 Xeon CPUs for the physical servers with Intel NICs

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shrub

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#526079 27-Sep-2011 10:11

I was running a pfsene box but I found it much easier/cheaper to get a router and load dd-wrt on it. Pfsense is great but it consumes alot of power for what it does in a home environment. Mine was running on an old P4 hence the power bill took a hit. If you get an atom or one of those VIA low power chips it would be fine.

chevrolux

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#526307 27-Sep-2011 16:42

The box I bought has a pentium 3. Did you really notice an increase in power usage?

I have had my seedbox running 24/7 for about a month now and havent noticed an increase in the power bill. It has an athlon processor.

insane

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#526327 27-Sep-2011 17:01

shrub: I was running a pfsene box but I found it much easier/cheaper to get a router and load dd-wrt on it. Pfsense is great but it consumes alot of power for what it does in a home environment. Mine was running on an old P4 hence the power bill took a hit. If you get an atom or one of those VIA low power chips it would be fine.

I've ran smoothwall, IPcop and pfsense. IPcop had a bunch of nice features like an update proxy and bandwidth monitoring per user, however I too ditched it due to the power bill and went to DD-WRT at the time . Now am using Tomato 1.28 on a Linksys E4200

chevrolux

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#526385 27-Sep-2011 18:10

I like the look of IPcop the best as it has better documentation than pfsense.

Hmmm, lots of people saying high power usage. makes me think.

mastapenguin

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#526591 28-Sep-2011 07:56

@Zeon,

Thanks for your reply. Do you think pfsense would run okay virtualized under Server 2008? My main concern is that ping and jitter would go up if the host was heavily loaded (hardly ever happens). Also, are there any security concerns or considerations needed if you run a virtualized firewall? If I did end up virtualizing pfsense I could re-enable snort.

@Chevrolux

I couldn't justify running another box just to do firewalling. I ended up buying an Alix 2D3 from PC Engines as it only uses 5 Watts. The cost was comparable to buying an Asus RT-N16.

Zeon

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#526607 28-Sep-2011 08:56

Ah PFsense is dodgy under Hyper-V since the latter has no official support for FreeBSD. The big loss is that you have to use legacy network adapters which max out at around 30mbps from my understanding.

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shrub

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#526657 28-Sep-2011 10:36

A p3/p4 box uses approx 80-100w at idle left on 24/7 will cost $15-$20 per month if you get a router that uses 5 watts after 9 months its paid for itself. My backwards thinking sorry.

chevrolux

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#526900 28-Sep-2011 18:45

@Shrub - Yea i see what you are saying.

Hmmm.... maybe go back to the cisco router and use IPSec for vpn'ing in to home.