Ha! funny I was just looking for this exact post about the apu1c. I just bought one, still waiting for it to arrive.

So how well does it run without all of the extras installed? Did you try it with just the base install?

I just bought Comcast's Extreme 105 at my new place and was thinking this thing should be more than enough to run as a firewall.

Ok, found a manual.
Unfortunately it's still somewhat ambiguous. There appear to be two relevant settings but I would try using the 'workstation' profile, probably quieter than server, and 3-pin since your only fan appears to be 3pin.
Is the box mounted in a rack? If you have space above it you could probably improve the cooling considerably and make it quieter by fitting a much larger fan to the top panel above the heatsink. The existing cooling doesn't look great, you appear to have just one fan that blows across the heatsink (plus whatever is in the PSU). There are no fans extracting the hot air and no ducting after the heatsink to stop hot air being recirculated into the box. You have two full sized HDs and an 85W TDP processor that doesn't support any power saving.There seems to be quite a lot of room for improvement.  ;)

Steve

While technically possible, it's unsupported and would require manual work (to format the drive, the keep it mounted, and to direct packages to use the space).

You're better off using an mSATA inside the device instead of the SD card, rather than an external drive.

You can order the mSATA for that device preloaded with pfSense, drop sales@pfsense.org a line and ask for info.

I wonder if that little "reset" button will work in this case?

@jirupa:

Getting this kind of error. The modem is working with Windows but I cannot get it to work with pfSense. Any ideas?

Experiment without pfSense but with the OS/BSD, in order to find out the script(s) you need to connect as ppp0 with your ISP.

Don't use i386 on any 64 bit capable hardware. Guessing it'll more than likely "just work" with amd64, given that's a widely used piece of hardware (but one likely no one runs 32 bit on).

Looks like the PCI-X support in cas(4) was not added until FreeBSD 9.x or 10.0, though pfSense may have backported it for pfSense 2.0.x.  Check the cas(4) man page here: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=cas&apropos=0&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+10.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html, and note that the 501-6738 PCI-X line is not in 8.3, but is in 10.0:

The following add-on cards are known to work with the cas driver at this time:     +o Sun GigaSwift Ethernet 1.0 MMF (Cassini Kuheen) (part no. 501-5524)     +o Sun GigaSwift Ethernet 1.0 UTP (Cassini) (part no. 501-5902)     +o Sun GigaSwift Ethernet UTP (GCS) (part no. 501-6719)     +o Sun Quad GigaSwift Ethernet UTP (QGE) (part no. 501-6522)     +o Sun Quad GigaSwift Ethernet PCI-X (QGE-X) (part no. 501-6738)

So, 2.2beta should theoretically work with your Sun card.  I (think I) verified the cas driver is compiled into the current 2.2beta image:

[2.2-BETA][root@pfsense.localdomain]/root(7): uname -a FreeBSD pfsense.localdomain 10.1-PRERELEASE FreeBSD 10.1-PRERELEASE #49 30e366f(HEAD)-dirty: Mon Oct  6 03:27:35 CDT 2014    root@pf22-amd64-snap:/usr/obj.amd64/usr/pfSensesrc/src/sys/pfSense_SMP.10  amd64 [2.2-BETA][root@pfsense.localdomain]/root(8): kldstat -v | grep -i cas                 106 cas/miibus                 105 pci/cas

I got to test this device again and using the number keys works.

ah ha, so it doesn't work then.  Using it for the WAN is why I need it for client mode.

SOLUTION:

was to use pfsense 2.2 BETA, it works like a charm with this ralink 3072, and was detected automatically.

Thanks for the help though,

Thanks for the info Derelict.

Looking at the C2758 since a while as a replacement to reduce my power consumption. Let me know how it spans on heavy load. I have Snort, Squid, pfblocker, Dans (with clamd). If it doesn't hold up then I suppose I can still live with my i3 (2nd generation) for now.

Thanks you for your consideration.

I live in Italy :-D ….. I think that with my administrative offices I will able to buy the hardware only in November and the install of the firewall is scheduled for Jannuary.

I hope that the 2.2 will be stable in Jannuary 2015 :-D.  I think that IPV6 on freebsd 10 (pfsense 2.2) is better than IPV6 on freebsd 8.3 (pfsense 2.1.5).

I will say though that your list above contains only Gigabit NICs so how have you come to your 4Gbps figure?

My network Is complicate…..  Now I use a firewall with 6 NICs.  Now I use 2Gbps (I see on my mrtg graph).

If I buy a new firewall I want double the fire power. I don't want to be precise.

Thank you

Do you actually need 1Gbps throughput? You won't get that with pfSense and a D2550 CPU. 'Laggy' performance can be very subjective and impossible to compare when he doesn't say what throughput he was trying to push.

Steve

Looking at the relevant source files in FreeBSD 8.3:
@https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/8.3.0/sys/dev/usb/usbdevs?revision=234063&view=markup:

vendor AIRPRIME 0x0f3d AirPrime, Inc.
….
vendor SIERRA 0x1199 Sierra Wireless
....
/* AirPrime products /
product AIRPRIME PC5220 0x0112 CDMA Wireless PC Card
....
/ Sierra Wireless products */
product SIERRA AC313U 0x68aa Sierra Wireless AirCard 313U
product SIERRA TRUINSTALL 0x0fff Aircard Tru Installer

Hmmm. The default mode should be VID:0x1199 PID:0x0fff and the target (modem) mode correctly 0x0f3d:0X68aa. However that's listed as 'Airprime' not sierra. u3g won't recognise that combination of IDs:
@https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/8.3.0/sys/dev/usb/serial/u3g.c?revision=234063&view=markup:

U3G_DEV(SIERRA, AC313U, 0),

Thus I would guess it's switching it it from the default mode, Sierra VID and PID, but not assigning any serial ports to it because the result is not recognised.
In the FreeBSD 10 source a combination device exists:
@https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/10.0.0/sys/dev/usb/serial/u3g.c?revision=260789&view=markup:

U3G_DEV(AIRPRIME, AC313U, 0),

I would expect this to work in pfSense 2.2.

Steve

There's no way to do pppoa directly so you have to use pppoe and a modem that can bridge the protocols. The Draytek V120 can do that. Other modems offer various bridge and half bridge modes that can also be used. Many ISPs do support pppoe even though they may not advertise it.
Maybe contact the users who have tried the linitx pci modem to what modes it's capable of.

Steve

Any updates on this build? Have a friend interested in trying out the Sempron 2650.

It is possible but your chances are not great.  :-\ Unless of course you're actually a 1337 bsd dev.  ;)
There are some instructions somewhere on forum for doing it  and I think I remember reading a blog post about it.
You may be able to permanently mode switch it using a Huawei utility or by sending it the correct code in Linux which might negate the issue.
There is a further issue with using devices that appear as cdce interfaces. If they go down for whatever reason (power saving, network issue etc) pfSense does not handle it well. It doesn't expect to have interfaces removed at any random time.

Steve

Lots to worry about, mostly if you break the syntax in the file you could break OpenVPN or other areas of the system as a consequence.

Otherwise, aside from the fact that you'll have to redo the edit after a firmware update, it should be OK.

Keep the gun pointed away from your foot during the process.