pfSense is only installable on x86. Since the G5 is a PPC….

It should do. You will have to run a 2.1 snapshot to support the newer hardware and since that is still pre beta you may experience some bugs. Until very recently there were issues with the graphics driver for the new generation Atom chipset but I believe a patch has now been included. Unless you can find another user running that same exact board there may be unexpected problems.  ;) Steve

Go with an Intel i5 3rd Generation. 16GB RAM should be well ahead of a good start. Typically 8-12GB RAM should be a decent start. Since you mention 650 users and running Snort on it, I recommend 16GB. the i5 should very easily handle 100Mbps routing. It can handle 1GB routing. Don't think about going with Atom or Celeron processor for this kind of setup as there will be a lot of routing between WAN and 650 LAN users and the i5 can handle it smoothly. Internal LAN communications don't take much CPU and are handled by the switch. Add a compatible quad port Intel gigabit PCIe NIC (if there is one.. I am not sure) OR just add 2 Intel dual port Gigabit PCIe NICs and you should have a good robust UTM. Do the same for a backup and you should be all set. I have a 2U setup - 2.0.1-RELEASE 64-bit, Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz and 8GB RAM. Runs the below services with no issues Asterisk Services 1.8.8.1 pkg v 0.1 HAVP antivirus Network Management 0.91_1 pkg v1.01 Lightsquid Network Report 1.8.2 pkg v.2.32 pfBlocker Firewall 1.0.2 RRD Summary System 1.1 snort Security 2.9.2.3 pkg v. 2.5.1 squid Network 2.7.9 pkg v.4.3.1 squidGuard Network Management 1.3_1 pkg v.1.9.1

Bingo!  Full install on a WD hard drive and no swap install :(  Dangit.  Will have to fix that. Thanks for helping me find that issue.  Will at least let me know what is going on with it going forward. Thanks again :)

Please provide more details than "didn't work". What did you do? what did you expect to happen? what actually happened?

The P3 should handle 100Mbps ok but it won't manage anything like that for vpn traffic. I would guess ~25Mbps. Steve

@rsyring: I was also thinking the Hamkua might be a good deal, but not sure about dropping $300 on something with a 30 day warranty. It's a good deal for what it is - solid performance for the price, fanless, low power consumption. Pulls around 25 watts, a quarter or less of what a typical recycled desktop PC that a lot of home users use. It may pay for itself in power savings vs. running a desktop PC. The concern with the 30 day warranty is legit with anything. My Hamakua died a couple months ago after about 2.5 years of flawless service. My power flickered off and back on 4 times in about 10 seconds, and it never booted again after that. It had been through probably 20 other brief power failures with no issue. It was on a surge protector, but not a UPS. Wasn't the power supply that was the issue either, it still worked fine, the box was just completely dead - lights on but nobody home. I'm not sure exactly what happened to it. If I had it on a UPS I'm guessing it'd still be working fine to this day. That same power event didn't hurt any of numerous other pieces of equipment I was running at the time so it's not like there was a major surge or something. Power flickering like that can kill any electronic gear though. I haven't heard of high levels of hardware failure with the Hamakuas, so it's not something I'd say to avoid because of the lack of warranty. But I would put it on a UPS from my experience of how mine died. Granted I'd recommend putting any computer and networking equipment you care about on UPS, I just didn't want to drop a pile of cash on several Kva of UPS for all the test/dev gear I run. :)

You could also try a 2.1 snapshot which will have more recent drivers and may support your card. The snapshots are for testing only though.  ;) What is the card you are trying? Steve

squid will kill your flash drive before too long. I believe quid can be configured to use RAM only, which is what you want until you get proper disk storage. I played with squid on pfsense about a year ago until I ran into some odd behaviour. The first annoyance was that it appeared to be downloading Windows updates proactively. This was probably due to the custom config I created with the help of a tutorial from the docs, but I wasn't fond of seeing all my bandwidth being eaten up by a non-human user. The second problem was large http downloads dying midstream, for example iso files from MSDN stalling or quitting after ~1.5 GB on multiple attempts. I suppose these problems were solvable, but I didn't have any more time to mess with it then.

Thank you, that is what I was looking for!  They are a little more where I am, $20~25 USD, but that's OK.

@jimp: Fun test: Remove a stick of RAM. Does it still show 2GB? Does it show the same with one DIMM alone in the other socket? If you remove a stick and it only sees 1GB, it may have a problem with the DIMM's density or something similar. I wouldn't expect that to happen on such recent hardware, but I have seen that in the past. Certain sticks of RAM and certain boards just don't mix. According to SuperMicro the exact spec for that board is: Up to 4 GB of unbuffered, non-ECC DDR3 800/667MHz SO-DIMM (Single Channel) Thanks for all replies. I already tried to remove one, switch places on the DIMMS, and even with two different DIMMS - same result - 2GB, no more and no less :( Thanks for looking up the specs. I use the recommended SO-DIMMS, 2x 2GB .. Must be either a bug in the current BIOS or that some of the manufacturers altered some detail in their product without notifying the others? How ever super micro are alerted & as soon as (/if) I hear anything useful from them that solves the problem, I'll post it here so others can see. It is a really nice box so apart from not beeing able to see all RAM I'd really like to recommend it - fairly energy conservative and all :) /E

Wow, that's quite a while on such an old drive! I'm going to just see what happens with the current machine. I have the original router sitting near so if the machine craps out, I can plug the old dlink router in for a temp fix until I can build a better pfsense machine.  :)

Yea seems a little pricey. Best off with an old Watchguard box.

Never heard of Nexcom.  I've got some Lanner hardware I'm fond of though.  I had no problem ordering but I know some around here have had similar issues ordering direct, just as you did with this other company.

Depends on how fast your Internet connection is and how much you expect to be able to get across VPN. In general, an Atom is usually capable of pushing more VPN traffic than the average person has bandwidth at home. If you're one of the very few who has 100+ Mbps of Internet, then maybe not, but most always you're going to be limited in that case by the bandwidth where ever you're connecting from.

iwn driver doesn't support AP mode - see http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=iwn&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+9.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html For AP mode your best best is probably to use a card with an Atheros chipset.

CPU seems about right to me. You could use top at the console though. Having the dashboard up uses some processing power. Although enabling HT appears to reduce CPU usage in reality you are adding two virtual cores that pfSense cannot usefully exploit. Hence the average usage across all 4 cores is reduced by two that are hardly working. You will see that from top. E.g. in test1: Core1 100%, core2 60%. Average 80% With HT Core1 100%, core2 60%, core3 0%, core4 0%. Average 40%. Obviously those figures will be slightly different! Steve

@stephenw10  Thank you @wallabybob Not very helpful, I understand the differences, but I saw that it worked on MirBSD already, you didn't even read anything about it just saw someone say the word linux and went off on your rant

@frater: I just noticed that I can ping the pfsense router on its vlanned IP during startup. Just before it comes with its menu it stops responding. Any chance you enabled the Serial Console option? Enabling Serial Console output will also cause that behavior on that board currently.