PC Engines APU2C4 (bundle) would be my 1st choice
Jetway NF9HG-2930 (self made) would be my 3rd choice
pfSense SG-2440 (bundle) would be my 2nd choice
Supermicro A1SRi-2358/2558/2758 last but powerful and more at the cost

@mifronte:

I am not trying to compare the ERL to pfSense.  I am just trying to find hardware that can reliably be sourced and be within the price point of the ERL that can run pfSense and still route at wired gigabit speed.  Since the ERL with hardware offloading can route at wired gigabit speed, I was hoping that there was some hardware that can do the same but be able to run pfSense.

Just trying to minimize the hardware costs of deploying routers to users with gigabit Internet where I can run pfSense.  I may have to wait to see the price point of the Atom C2358.

Edit:

Looks like the Atom C2358 is starting at $180 for the Supermicro A1SRI-2358F

There doesn't seem to be a use case here then. If all they want is a gigabit capable NAT router, an Asus RT-AC66U would do the job and has far less hassle than the Edge series.

What you could sell to them is the idea of a VPN gateway. Just a simple to setup OpenVPN feature and no licensing fees would be worth deploying pfSense for. Any comparable 'branded' device (Cisco ASA, Juniper SRX, Palo Alto, Fortinet, SonicWall etc) in the same performance league would cost more than pfSense hardware.

@guardian:

@krackpot:

Did you settle on RAM? Been following your choices in your build and would be interested to see how it comes together.

I'll let you know how it works when I get the rest of the stuff, still waiting for the MB and PS so it will be awhile before I get to building it, but I did buy the Corsair Vengeance 9-9-9-24.  It was on sale, and the cheapest that my local store had to offer.

I promised to report back:  The 9-9-9-24 Memory works just fine.

I did however build a different system… went with a little package from China due to cost.  You can see what I got here.

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=113308.msg638930#msg638930

So I have one of the 4GB modules from this set:
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3L
1600MHz CL9 1.35v SODIMMs
(CMSX8GX3M2B1600C9)
and a:
Samsung 850 EVO 120GB SSD

Maybe something wrong with the disk so that nothing can be written to it?

got it working:

Posting for future hackers….
I bought a 4G LTE modem from the official list. I chose the ZTE MF823 because it appears as an ethernet device.
Both nix and windows would see it as a network adapter and bring the connection up straight away. But not freebsd.
After several attempts at firmware tweaks and whatnot, i stumbled upon this russian thread: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=76363.0
I don't speak russki, but i saw this command in the thread:
    "usbconfig -u 0 -a 3 set_config 1"
so I started digging a bit.
My device appeared like this: ugen1.2: <zte,incorporated>at usbus1
And in the end, this command did the trick: usbconfig -d 1.2 set_config 2
The ue0 adapter appeared:
ue0: Ethernet address: 36:4b:50:b7:ef:44
ue0: <usb ethernet="">on cdce0
cdce0: <cdc ethernet="" control="" model="" ecm="">on usbus1
ugen1.2: <zte,incorporated>at usbus1
I could then set the wan interface as ue0 with dhcp, and the interface came up.
It's been stable ever since, even across reboots.
Unlimited 40/20Mbps for $20 a month... I like it.
Imgur album with all the settings and speedtest.
http://imgur.com/a/TUa23</zte,incorporated></cdc></usb></zte,incorporated>

got it working:

Posting for future hackers….
I bought a 4G LTE modem from the official list. I chose the ZTE MF823 because it appears as an ethernet device.
Both nix and windows would see it as a network adapter and bring the connection up straight away. But not freebsd.
After several attempts at firmware tweaks and whatnot, i stumbled upon this russian thread: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=76363.0
I don't speak russki, but i saw this command in the thread:
    "usbconfig -u 0 -a 3 set_config 1"
so I started digging a bit.
My device appeared like this: ugen1.2: <zte,incorporated>at usbus1
And in the end, this command did the trick: usbconfig -d 1.2 set_config 2
The ue0 adapter appeared:
ue0: Ethernet address: 36:4b:50:b7:ef:44
ue0: <usb ethernet="">on cdce0
cdce0: <cdc ethernet="" control="" model="" ecm="">on usbus1
ugen1.2: <zte,incorporated>at usbus1
I could then set the wan interface as ue0 with dhcp, and the interface came up.
It's been stable ever since, even across reboots.
Unlimited 40/20Mbps for $20 a month... I like it.
Imgur album with all the settings and speedtest.
http://imgur.com/a/TUa23</zte,incorporated></cdc></usb></zte,incorporated>

Great, thanks!

Ok..

so I have installed PFsense onto this machine.

I am using the onboard NIC and a USB->Gbe NIC as my WAN connection (I figured the USB2 port would bottleneck the LAN but be fine for 113Mbit WAN).

Now I need to learn about the software. I'm following the FAQ and wiki. I would like to know if there is a guide for testing the integrity of my setup once I decide to put it in as my router (check firewall, DNS and what is visible from WAN side etc). Any advice?

@Corn:

Thought I'd share this with everyone in this forum, it may be interesting for some (though for most, a bit of an overkill). I wanted some more storage available on my Firebox x750e, but didn't like the idea of installing a very expensive IDE SSD (with a very low throughput), or a bigger CF card. CF card just aren't built for a lot of IOPS, and wear levelling isn't really strong on those things either. I wanted a solution that will last for years.

Needed:

Firebox x750e (this guide may be compatible with other fireboxes as well. Also, this guide assumes you already flashed the bios. Not sure if it works without flashing the bios first… Pretty sure it doesn't.) Small PCIE SATA controller (needs to be supported by pfsense. I used a Si3132 card) SATA SSD SATA power connector CF Card for installation Null-modem cable small gauge wires soldering iron some sort of plastic card, such as a customer loyalty card a few screws ....

Have you tried of the SATA controller doesn't fit the PCI-Express x4 slot right next to it ?
Normally a PCI-Express x4 is backwards compatible to lower speed devices.
That way, you must not soldered anything, just the Sata power cable to the powersupply.

Grtz
DeLorean

@webdawg:

@lhock98:

Hi bro,

i just received my new 4 ports router from chinese seller, had been up and running pfsense 2.3.1 for the pass 4-5 days system was very well no hang no lag. total of 4 ports yet i configured 1WAN and 3 LAN all ports running well. here are the spec. power using external dc12v step down tranformer as can see from the picture

1)intel celeron j1900 @2.0ghz
2)2gb ddr3 so-dimm (able to support up to 8gb)
3)8gb msata ssd
4) 4*intel 82583v Gigabit Ethernet Controller
5)onboard 2 msata slot and 3 sata

Can you please post where you got it from/ link to it?

I am also interested from where the op got said hardware.

I sse where you come from. My sandisk 64GB SSD only uses less than 4GB for my pfsense system.

Yep - one of these is working great in my box!

bump

Yea, it was 115 F. And it wasn't momentarily either, it was for a few hours at the least.

I doubt your box of sarcasm would last long if I had access.  :)

@BlueKobold:

Hey there, ive finally decided to put a build together but I am very unsure of what parts to get.

This is mostly pending on many things and not only one or two things.

installed packets used services offered functions turned on options

I think low power consumption is quite important but here are the speeds I will need the box to handle: 1gigabit wanspeed and 1gigabit LAN speed.

For 1 GBit/s at the WAN port it is useful to know what connection art you are using!

PPPoE static or dynamic address FTTH/FTTC or coper connection

I will have around 20 users.

wired or wireless clients?

Greateful for recomendations.
I have thought about the ASRock C2750D4I boards but I am not sure.

This is based on an Intel SoC called Avoton, this comes together with AES-NI and TurboBoost, the other
Intel SoC called "Rangeley" is coming together with the AES-NI and Intel QuickAssist that should be more
for firewall and router usage, the other one is more produced for running servers and NAS appliances.

This board is at ~420 € here in Germany and the SuperMicro A1SRi-2758 (Rangeley) is about ~370 €
if this is not really yours, I would suggest two other things you should be lucky with.

ASUS Q87T
This board is supporting many different CPUs and you will be able to upgrade it if you need and want it.
And it is also accepting up to max. of 16 GB of RAM and one mSATA and one WiFi miniPCIe card, together
with an Intel i3, i5 or E3 it will be surely able to route 1 GBit/s at the WAN port with ease.
Together with an Intel dual or quad port network adapter it will be surely route the traffic
well for you.

Cisco SG300-20 Switch
This switch can handle the entire LAN and VLAN traffic with "wire speed", not really cheap but
really long in usage for you!!!!

Yeah,actually the motherboard you have seems to be the one i looked at the other day?, what I am concerned about is which AP to buy and if I need to buy an extra NIC cardto get Intel NICs, i wouldn't want anything less than gigabit speeds over LAN. I currently sit at around 50-60 at best and that's shameful.

UBNT WiFi APs are doing a good job and will be cheap and on top a free of charge wireless controller software
that can be used to configure and manage them right.

What kind of boot device should I get?

mSATA from crucial with 60/80/120 GBs

As far as installed packets I plan on using network wide adblock for one.
I plan on using 8 gigs of ram and a 16 or 32 gig SATADOM.

I am thinking to use my old router ASUS RTAC66U as an AP but I don't really know how to demote it to an AP but that is something I will have to figure out.
One other thing ive thought about is having my servers on a separate VLAN than the wireless devices.

I would also like to monitor useage and see statistics of how much is used.
Sorry for my very alte reply.

I would like to use both squid and snort. Is 8 gigs of ram enough?
Also, I have downsized to 15 clients in total. So a 10 port CISCO Switch wouldn't be bad.
Should I get the 4 or 8 core version?, I currently use 1 Gbit/s.

Depends on what you intend to do with the box, but in general, not a bad start for a cheap home setup.

Similar to what you can do yourself, but someone preloaded it, only thing I might ask about is the Trendnet card added in.
Might like to have a good picture of the inside to make sure the MB isn't showing signs of being cooked.

Only better price would be something similar from a source local to you via Craigslist or whatnot to save shipping.

Just my $.02