HTTP from DMZ –-> LAN yields approx 2.4MB/s. Still nowhere near 80Mb/s line speed.. I'll get some dumps later this week and see how I get on..

If the Netgear doesn't give you the options you need with the standard firmware you could always try a different one such Routertech (www.routertech.org) or Openwrt (www.openwrt.org). You might end up bricking it though.  ::) Steve

If you can find one with Atheros or Ralink chipset it should be OK. I don't know the model but at one point I had a Linksys card that was really a Ralink card and it seemed OK as an AP, though I didn't use it for anything more than testing.

Look at the reviews for this card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16839314004 One reviewer says that FreeBSD 7.2 recognized it without issue. If that's the case, it is likely to work with pfSense, but I'm not sure which driver it would use. One review says Marvell Yukon, so probably msk(4). From what I can tell, it's possible that there isn't really a distinction with ExpressCard from PCI-E cards, except that I wouldn't try to hotswap them. :-)

Thanks for the help.  When I set Disable hardware checksum offloading from web GUI I also removed a stick of ram I considered to be of questionable integrity and the issue vanished.    I will test the ram again at a later date, but I believe the hardware checksum offloading was the problem. This system was originally running off of a different board/cpu/memory with the same NICs with the same problem. Either way problem solved thanks for the assistance.

Netgate (http://www.netgate.com/) has a number of units just like that.  I have one of their Hamakua DT machines and it works great.

I have no experience with the ip260, but there are several ip530 threads here (what I run with 1.2.3) and a few other Nokia threads.  Maybe something there can help.  Good luck.

Its possible. You will probably find it is more straightforward to try pfSense 2,0 BETA which is based on FreeBSD 8.1. The pfSense developers don't yet think 2.0 is ready for production use but there are many users who are finding it "good enough". I you find the alc driver is not included in pfSense 2.0 BETA then a post in the 2.0 beta forum saying so will probably be sufficient to get included in a build within a few days. pfSense 2.0 BETA snapshot builds can be downloaded from http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_8_1/i386/pfSense_HEAD/?C=M;O=D

Also take a look at building a system from the Supermicro X7SPA-HF Atom ITX board. It has: Atom D510 (Dual Core) 2 x Intel Gigabit LAN Up to 4GB RAM IPMI "Lights Out" management. I currently have one with a SATA-> CF adapter and it's great! No moving parts. I'm also using VLANs and everything works well. http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPA.cfm?typ=H&IPMI=Y Thanks!! Riley

I saw a lot of posts with people having bad problems with the USB Nics. I still can't get the PCMCIA card to work, if that worked I wouldn't have to use the USB one. Luckily this is just a home system whilst I learn how to use pfsense properly, so the WAN interface is 4-8Mbits. Once I get to grips with it, it would be put onto more suitable machines. That VLAN configuration certainly sounds like an option I will look at. I just received a VLAN capable switch :)

The "crappy" Realtek cards were all 100Mbit. The gigabit cards are quite a bit better; I've never had any problems with them. Intel cards are of higher quality, for certain, but in most cases the Realtek cards will do just fine.

Nope, unfortunately it always generates a random MAC address. See here. I don't think the driver has changed in freebsd 8 so I don't think 2.0beta will help. Like I said it's not a show stopper  ::) (or even close!) just an interesting problem I ran into. However it could be much more of a problem to anyone using the cdce driver for wan. I wonder if it may be possible to hard code a mac into it? Here some output: cdce0: <sharp 2="" sl-5500,="" class="" 0,="" rev="" 2.00="" 0.00,="" addr="">on uhub0 cdce0: faking MAC address cdce0: WARNING: using obsoleted IFF_NEEDSGIANT flag cdce0: Ethernet address: 2a:f0:4e:00:00:00 cdce0: at uhub0 port 1 (addr 2) disconnected cdce0: detached cdce0: <sharp 2="" sl-5500,="" class="" 0,="" rev="" 2.00="" 0.00,="" addr="">on uhub0 cdce0: faking MAC address cdce0: WARNING: using obsoleted IFF_NEEDSGIANT flag cdce0: Ethernet address: 2a:57:58:00:00:00</sharp></sharp> Steve

The firewall rule Was the key. I'd actually stumbled accross this on another forum. I believe that ive got everything setup right. Now to put the router into production tomorrow and see if it breaks everything ;)

Solved: i just install the vga connector with ribbon cable in the main board that i read in astaro forum. Then install pfsense. Astaro 425 has P4 HT 3.06 Ghz, 2Gb DDR2 555Mhz and 8 10/100/1000 ethernet. Pfsense works smoothly!

@JeffD: @C7J0yC3: I have been running pfSense for a while on my firebox, and recently upgraded to the 2.0 beta (loving it, minus a few issues). The other day rummaging around in my spare RAM bin looking for sticks to put in a laptop I found a 512MB stick of PC133. I promptly popped it into my firebox, restarted, and felt good about my upgrade. However today I noticed that it was only seeing 256MB. Is there something somewhere in the config or on the box I need to set to see all 512MB? CJOY - mind sharing your steps in installing PF to your FB X700?  See my post as i'm having such a bad luck with getting mine installed..  any help is appreciated. Yes, I used a x86 1.2.3 pfSense live CD and a 40GB IDE laptop harddrive. 1: I put the hard drive in a Dell Latitude D600 I had lying around and installed from the live CD to the hard drive. 2: I removed the flash card from the Firebox so the hard drive would be the only storage. 3: I booted the firebox and hooked up my console cable. As I remember I didn't have to change any of the boot settings as it was supposed to boot to the hard drive anyway. 4: Did my initial setup of interfaces, passwords etc. 5: Updated to the 2.0 Beta via the web interface. I was also able to get it installed on a 4GB Sandisk ExtremeII CF card, however getting to to successfully boot up after the install was a PITA so I ditched it and went with the hard drive.

Does anyone know why when booting with ACPI disabled it switches com ports…see below ACPI Enabled LCD = /dev/cuad0 Port = /dev/cuad1 ACPI Disabled Port = /dev/cuad0 LCD = /dev/cuad1

Thanks for everyones help. I understand the outside QOS issue. The vendor of the phones recommends DSL lines for its dedicated bandwidth. The QOS is there to stop video, email downloads, or computer updates from plugging up the internet pipe. I went ahead and ordered four of them so I will know in the next few weeks how it goes. I have never setup pFsense to work with a ppoe connection, but I know its supported and I will learn. The book details it out. Thanks again!

Thanks!  Think I have something in mind.