@8buttons: my projects PSU went up in smoke, put a bit of a spanner in the works Spanner in the PSU will do it! Try to keep the magic smoke in.  :P Steve

http://www.mitxpc.com/proddetail.asp?prod=EKJAD5254LM350&cat=209 I have used this for the last year with a HDD and not had any problems.

With an 8/1 connection and not running any big packages you would be fine with almost anything you can get pfSense to run on. Like, for example an Atom or an Alix box. Steve

As for the actual question from @Zflash76 JNC9C only support Gen1 daughterboards (ADE3RTLANG and ADE3INLANG). Gen2 daughterboards (ADE4RTLAN and ADE4INLAN) are incompatible with this board.

@Paul47: I wasn't complaining about usb nics in general. I had one working for me flawlessly for months. It's just that traffic shaping requires the appropriate driver which axe0 and ue0 definitly are not. That's why I changed to a standard PCI nic. Regards, Sebastian

@bkraptor: The new Avoton motherboards which include 4x Intel 1 Gbps ports would be the logical upgrade once pfSense 2.2 (FreeBSD 10) gets released. Linky Wow just wow, that thing has an 8 full core atom cpu each core running @ 2.4ghz ! Surely must be the new baytrail range atoms? I think the penium 2.4ghz J2900 was a quad looks like this mobo just slapped on 2 of them. And 20watts max…. this thing could replace half the desktop pcs if not 100% overkill for a pfsense box ! I do like the fact it has 4 giga ports and also supporst 1.5volt ddr3 sodimms, a full size pci express 16x slot may have made this a gaming rig even. Also it supports AES instructions for VPN users :)

Here is something I ran across just now: http://www.ebay.com/itm/pfSense-2-1-Release-DIY-Watchguard-Firebox-R6264S-Conversion-Kit-X500-X700-X1000-/221283494669?pt=US_Firewall_VPN_Devices&hash=item3385862b0d pfSense 2.1 Release DIY Watchguard Firebox R6264S Conversion Kit X500,X700,X1000 Not really sure if it's worth it since better off with newer WatchGuard hardware with less hassle.

Yep, I agree you are at the mercy of some switch firmware bug. I would always choose real NICs but if forced to choose between USB or VLAN interfaces I'd still go VLAN. At least until I read about a VLAN exploit in the wild. Steve

Usually it asks you where to mount root from because you have changed the system configuration somehow, like removing the cd-rom drive, and the fstab is now pointing at the wrong drive. For example you have the CD-ROM and HD on the same IDE channel using cable select. In this config the HD is the primary slave, ad1, so that's what gets set in the fstab. When you remove the cd drive the HD now becomes the primary master, ad0, so the fstab must be changed. Steve

@stephenw10: As mentioned an i3 is massive overkill for 6Mbps throughput even if you run everything possible. Importantly although you can load balance the 4 WANs you cannot combine them in the true sense to get a single 6Mbps connection. You will still have a 2Mbps limit per connection. The only way you can do better than that is with multi-link PPP (https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Multi-Link_PPP_%28MP/MLPPP%29) but to use that your ISP must support it. Steve Thank you for your insight and suggestion, I am new and still trying to understand the very basic of pfsense.

Good price. I definitely don't need another one!  ;) Steve

I upgraded my boxes. The only one I had any trouble with was one that had low RAM, 256MB. If you're running Nano then the upgrade is pretty much a new install anyway. The logs are in /var/log. Not sure you can just copy them across though, I've never tried. Really you should use a syslog server if you want to keep logs long term. Steve

The D2500 will route >500Mbps. Your situation should be ok but it might be towards the top of its performance. No headroom for additional serivices etc. You could probably get some more accurate figures from Netgate. Steve

Depending on how much noise you can put up with you should at least consider a low end Sandy/Ivy bridge box with a Celeron. Say a G1610T. Those are cheap and low power, you can go passive cooling for some additional cost. You can build up a system for very close to the cost of an Atom box and it will be far more capable. Importantly any socket 1155 has loads of very easy upgrade options should you find you need even more. With the Atom you need to replace the whole board. Have a search on the forum, there are quite a few threads in which people have detailed similar builds. Steve

Maybe. What versions are they? Have you searched the forums for the part number?

@MediocreFred: Upgraded the hardware over the weekend. Went off without a hitch. Thanks to everybody that replied for all of the information and suggestions. Glad it went smooth for you. Now all you need to do is create a signature like mine and put your specs below.  8)

The Atom will acheive ~50Mbps VPN. I would expect the Celeron to be slightly faster but I've never tested one, it will be <100Mbps. At those speeds the Realtek NICs will not be throttling the throughput at all but as said Intel NICs are preferable. Steve

@Jason: Jump mentioned a while back that the AES-NI code in OpenVPN was much better than the cryptodev module and that it would likely be faster if you unloaded it and rebooted.  Is that still the case? It's not "much better", it's just the openssl port.  If it doesn't go through the cryptdev interface, then yes, it's probably faster. That being true, OpenVPN has it's own performance problems to deal with.  (Read: context switch overhead.)  One way to fix this would be to put netmap under openvpn. As I said, it's being addressed.

It can't be shutdown from software. It doesn't have an ACPI power button, the switch at the back is a real physical switch in the power line. I don't think it has the required connections from board to the PSU but even if it did and you succeeded in making it shutdown to standby there would be no way of turning it back on.  ;) It's possible to make it halt without rebooting but there's not much purpose to doing that, it is still powered up. Steve