@acharge:

Woaw,

thanks for you reply !!

Atom 8 cores are awesome ! I will check that. Do you know a very cool embedded board with this processor ?

Have a nice day

A.

C2758 - http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SRi-2758F.cfm
C2750 - http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SAi-2750F.cfm

Series 7 chipsets were the last ones that came together with 8257x controllers.

Series 8 will almost always be built with a i21x ethernet controller due to intel bundling them together for a discount. Some of these discounts are probably pretty big, its the only way I can explain certain motherboards with onboard 10GbE being as cheap as they are. (~$400 for brand new X540 dual port, ~$500 if you want a LGA2011 board and SAS HBA glued to it)

There might be hard to find exceptions (don't know any off top of my head) and likely cost more than just getting a separate card. So unless your case cannot fit a card, there is your solution :)

That is also assuming they don't go the typical ultra-cheap route and just use a realjunk controller instead.

The base OS on pfSense 2.1.x is FreeBSD 8.3, whereas on 2.0.x it was FreeBSD 8.1. So the drivers are likely to be newer and perhaps behave better, but without digging through FreeBSD's source to compare between those versions it's tough to say exactly what if anything changed in the driver.

pfSense 2.2 is based on FreeBSD 10.x and is even more likely to work well on that hardware, but it's still some distance from release or production quality yet.

You're better off spending a few more bucks on known-good hardware (e.g. Intel NICs) than trying to hope an off-brand works well.

pfSense doesn't support by-pass ports directly and usually you would not ever want that feature on a firewall.
The issue would be that the bypass feature must be capable of being disabled either by jumpers or in the bios otherwise it will quickly bypass the ports after the watchdog timer expires (30s perhaps). An alternative would be to write your own code which keeps the watchdog happy but that would be a last resort.

Steve

https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=PPPoE+server

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?board=28.0

and if you want some actual cable length, I have bought these (using one now on an Alix 2D13 serial):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000067SCH/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've never seen a USB-to-RS232 adapter which is configured for null modem use.  Get an adapter.

If you don't actually want to use a transparent setup you can hide it from a tracert by using policy routing.  I consider it a bug.  Others a feature.

https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/932

Got a Kill-A-Watt and measured idle power draw of several different types of hardware for general comparison. Looks like I need to replace my current setup before I spend too much on additional electricity usage.

Initial setup
Case: eMachines micro-ATX mini tower
Motherboard: Supermicro PDSBM-LN2+
CPU: Intel Xeon 3060
PSU: Enermax EG465P-VE 460W
Disk: Western Digital 80GB HDD
NICs: Dual onboard Intel 82573L WAN/LAN, Intel Pro/100 PCI for WiFi AP

Current setup same as initial except
PSU: Antec VP450 450W

Test setup 1 same as initial except
Case: ABMX rackmount 1U
PSU: Ablecom 520W 1U
NICs: Intel Pro/1000 MT PCI-X in PCI slot

Test setup 2
Case: generic ATX tower
Motherboard: Supermicro C2SEA
CPU: Intel Q8300
PSU: Antec Neopower 650 Blue 650W
Disk: Seagate 7200.12 500GB HDD
NICs: Onboard Realtek RTL8111C for LAN1, Intel Pro/1000 PT x2 for WAN1/WAN2, Intel Pro/1000 CT for LAN2

Idle power draw

Initial setup: 70W
Current setup: 61W
Test setup 1: 69W
Test setup 2: 54W

and just for grins

Dell Optiplex 980/i3-530/pfsense: 36W
Dell Optiplex 980/i3-530/Win7: 34W
HP 8200 Elite/i5-2500/Win7: 24W
HP 8200 Elite SFF/i5-2400/Win7: 25W

@deagle:

Is the embedded NIC Intel from the SoC?

According to Intel, ATOM E3815/E3825 do not include integrated LAN.
Probably a Realtek (if I may guess).

Bandwidth requirements?  Running squid & squidguard on a D525 Atom might not be a great idea depending on what kind of connection you've got.

I don't know the original make/model as it was a system pull from an Acer Aspire One, but this card works fine:

ath0: <atheros 2424="" 5424=""> mem 0xfea00000-0xfea0ffff at device 0.0 on pci4 ath0: [ITHREAD] ath0: AR2425 mac 14.2 RF5424 phy 7.0</atheros>

I've got the C2758 variant.  Works great under 2.1.1 now that the upgraded Intel drivers are back in the build.  The only warning I'll give is that you'll have a grand total of (2) working USB ports.  Most of the ports on this board are 3.0 and that doesn't work yet.

You may add a /boot/loader.conf.local file by touch command for addational config settings. Then just edit it and add the line "legal.intel_ipw.license_ack=1".

Then the error massages will be gone.

The CPU is used by serveral php-processes …

Thank you all for your replies. In the mean time I stumbled upon an offer I couldn't refuse; a Dell R200 (see sig) for very little money, and 1 HP V1910-48G for even less money. I have been fighting with this machine for a couple of days (not necessarily the machine's fault, as I fight with every machine I come across  ;D) and I have to say by now it is working very well.

Now I would love to get my two pfSense machines in full automatic CARP, but it appears that won't be easy. Well, at least I now have a backup pfSense and a backup switch.

Ah, before I forget, for future noobs like me: I bought this machine as it was on sale (refurbished) in the pfSense store on this very forum. If the great men (and women?) who create pfSense sell a Dell R200 there should be no doubt that it will work, so hence my purchase (not from pfSense, as it appeared shipping these machines from the USA to Amsterdam was triple the cost of the appliances itself thanks to the mentally retarded 'Fedex'-and alikes of this world. It would amount to 500-600 USD just to put these in the belly of the big Boeing).

Thank you again for your suggestions  ;D

It will easily fit in the M350 Universal Mini-ITX enclosure.