@cmb: what's their port set to? Sounds like they're both right, you have yours on auto, theirs is forced, and as to be expected with such a misconfiguration, you have a duplex mismatch. Both must match. The code I included is what they sent me. I can't tell if that says it's set to 100FD or Auto. However, on my standby box, I played around and when set to 100FD, everything worked fine. Should I just go ahead and force that my primary too? I tried to force 1000Mbps to check but the port totally dropped. (EDIT) I forced both the active and passive to 100FD and it seems as if things are much smoother now. I was having erratic upload speeds when I would run a speedtest.net test, but now things are nearly 100Mbs up and down. Thanks as always cmb.

@MMacD: If I want a new fBSD box, I don't have to go through a lot of agony.  I can pretty much buy the parts, assemble them, install the software, turn it on, and there it is.  I'd like to be able to do the same with this firewall-et-al. build. The few DIY builders you see running into agony picking hardware would have the exact same issues with stock FreeBSD. Anything that works with stock FreeBSD 8.1 will work with pfsense 2.0.1. The only place you see trouble there is where people pick hardware that wouldn't work with stock FreeBSD.

For servicing clients on the local network where they may be able to pull up to 1 Gbps, definitely. Better quality NIC will be faster and chew up less of the server's CPU.

802.11N is not currently supported directly. If you need to have that use an separate access point. Steve

Try to disable DMA for sure: http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Booting_Options#Disable_DMA_for_IDE_drives

You get this working?

See here also: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,45430.msg243099.html#msg243099

Using CAT5 rather than CAT5e should work reliably to stay at 100 Mb only, though that may not be the case depending on your equipment.

Ok. Right now i'm having from my ISP a packet broadband of 50 mbs(4-5mbps download speed in fact), i mean i have a connection of 100 mpbs from my isp when i m connected with ppoe, but in fact is limited to 50mbs(two possible packets from isp 50/100) so in near future will be changed to 100 mpbs, an avg download speed of 8-9 mbps, this will have a stronger solicitation of my sistem/nics i believe ? even if the sistem will be conected on wan with 100mbps like now but download/upload speed will be encreased! Will have to make some improvments…. Thanks !

I just wanted to update this thread and let everyone know what is probably already been stressed over and over again here: TRUST ONLY INTEL NICs. PERIOD. They are the be-all, end-all of NIC problems. ;D I replaced the 3com with the Intel one, and bam: 0 errors, 0 collisions. pfSense installed, configured over the weekend, and running smoothly.

It has to be supported by one of the drivers included in lcdproc (or you can write your own driver!). The second two devices look likely to be covered by this: http://lcdproc.sourceforge.net/docs/lcdproc-0-5-5-user.html#SureElec Steve

Yes but in the end you need a VLAN-capable switch, to be able to separate traffic to different physical ports. Which can be much more expensive than a NIC.

Most ZTE modems can be locked in modem mode using a few AT commands. E.g. http://3g-modem.wetpaint.com/page/ZTE+AT-commands I take it that your modem is not supported by u3g? You could try the recent port of usb_modeswitch. See this thread. Steve

@amlife: Hello I have seen number of offerings on ebay for used firebox appliances , however all of them have low  memory / CPU which typically ranges between 128 - 512 memory with funny CPU speed. Will this be enough to process traffic ranges between 10 - 50 mbps? I was looking at X1250e which is expensive, yet I'm not sure if I can get the LCD to work Thank you Those 1.4GHz / 512MB units are completely capable of 50mbps three times over at least actually. I have three WAN connections, and it never flinches. If you start running crazy packages, you will have a drop, but even the x1250es doesn't have much CPU for that.

@jimp: http://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/2196 TY!

Nice build! I did the same thing with an old Dell OptiPlex GX150 that I snagged for $10 at an auction. Pentium III/933 512MB of PC133 HDD was missing.  Added a 6GB ATA HDD (out of an OLD Power Mac G3) (free) Added an Intel PWLA8391GTLBLK PRO/1000 GT GigE PCI network adapter on LAN side ($34 Amazon) 350Mbps throughput from this little thing.  Amazing given this box is under a gigahertz and is single core with a 133Mhz bus. The WAN side is using the on-board 3Com 3C905B Ethernet adapter, but my cable link is only 10/2, so it isn't saturating the NIC anyway.

I have only one WAN and one LAN with LAN Subset 192.168.2.0/24 and 3 PCs on this LAN.

Whilst I agree that shuting down the system with shutdown -h now is the correct way to do this I have never had a problem on any firebox when running Nano. In the NanoBSD install the filesystem on the CF is mounted read only and it runs almost entirely from ram. You could be very unlucky and switch it off just as it was writing some rrd data for instance. I have just found a post from another user who said that he found the console menu could still be accessed but was running at 115,200 instead of 9,600. Might be worth trying that first. Steve

@wallabybob: @spray: Looked up the hardware compatibility list, but could not find "Azurewave Wifi Module". :( Do you want your pfSense to act as a WiFi Access Point? @w00t: http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Intel-4965-4965AGN-wireless-802-11-wifi-3antenna-/390212119080 (http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.1R/hardware.html#WLAN) For 8$ you get full compability I guess :) Is Access Point mode supported on this card in pfSense? If I recall correctly, Access Point mode is NOT reported in the supported modes of most Intel cards. Ah. Well, the best is to look for cards in the hardwarelist then. Pick one with AGBN and accesspoint-support.

http://ark.intel.com/products/56462/Intel-Desktop-Board-D2500CC d2500cc -> just released this week or so (about last week or so i checked and it was not available yet). Intel board - nice Intel chip NIC (Gb of course) - nice dual port NIC - now that's what made me buying this board 10W TDP mini ITX atom D2500 CPU - not too slow (passmark doesn't have a value for D2500 yet but i expect it to be faster than D525 and slower than D2700, which should still be pretty decent nevertheless) D-sub + DVI PS2 i think it also has one mini express card slot if you want to put wifi card onto it. from what i can see, only thing missing is DC input (see DN2800MT, 8v ~ 19v DC input onboard, very handy) however this can still be over 20W though. i have a intel D525MWV board + seasonic SII 330W PSU (80 plus) + 3.5" hard drive + intel PCI Gb NIC -> all this comes to 30~35W. well if change 3.5" into SSD then maybe it can be close to 20W i guess. alternatively can consider going the DN2800MT route. it is rated at 6.5w TDP but with one NIC only. however the final box would be quite a lot bigger as it'd need a PCI NIC. i bought one D2500CC today together with Aopen S100 case (with 65W DC adaptor). if you don't know what S100 case is, you really should take one second to have a good look at it. currently considering if should buy one SSD or 2.5" HDD - many thanks to thai flood, interestingly, it's cheaper to buy an intel SSD 40G than buying a 320/500G 2.5" HDD… can't wait to get my first pf box running :)