@railstream: So I built my own Supermicro setup bare bones kit with the C2758 CPU and motherboard that supported 1600Mhz Ram. So I installed 16GB ram and a 120GB SSD. Wow.  Holy overkill Batman! All of my pfSense boxes have only used ~1GB of disk space. I've also never seen it use more than a few hundred megs of RAM

If there are no issues with this card and it works likes expected I personally would not really change anything. But if you want to do something that is not really effecting this system and enough memory is there you could try out to high up the mbuf size to 1000000 if you want.

Hi dear proffesionals , we have a couple  of ZyWall 110 hardware PfSense is a x86 based software firewall and the ZyWall is not hardware compatible to that piece of software. and i want to run it in pfsense, the zywall 110 runs in  Cavium OCTEON II processor, The Cavium OCTEON II CPU is from the CN68XX family and that are MIPS64 CPUs and not really x86 hardware like. It can cbe used in smaller devices as a CPU only and in other devices as a add on CPU for doing the encryption and compression workload. So it can be a single CPU or as stand alone and also as a CPU on an add on card or as a co-processor in greater systems. i will read that freebsd 10.x supports  that processor, It can be that FreeBSD is supporting it, but not as a main or system CPU! Only on add on cards or as a co-processor it might be recognized. if pfsense 2.3 support that processors and possible run pfsense  on zywall110 series pfSense has no MIPS64 fork at this days.

As far as I know, there should be a chip that can assist with encryption on this board. There is not a really extra chip for it, but more a CPU or SoC register that offers AES-NI and over that it would be able to speed up the IPSec performance if the AES-GCM mode will be chosen. How do we enable this? Where in pfSense 2.3.1 can we set it up? I think in the version 2.3.1 it is an issue about that and so I personally would be more looking to go with the version 2.2.6 (64Bit) instead of the version 2.3.1.

Although not on the official list it may work on FreeBSD: The Mellanox cards work well under FreeBSD so I assume they would work well under FreeNAS. Worst case you may have to drop into a shell and install the Mellanox drivers, but the good news is they do provide them for FreeBSD (and so FreeNAS). They also work well under 2012 R2 in my experience. I'm running a MNPH29D-XTR in the FreeBSD box and a MNPA19-XTR in each of my 2012 R2 hosts. https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/34qb64/cheapest_route_to_10gb/ But… with regards to pfSense, there are some bad news: Sitting here now, PFSense cannot recognize my Mellanox MNPH29D-XTR ConnectX-2 EN. Couldn't install the drivers either as PFsense has removed build tools from the base system. Trying FreeBSD 10.2 now, looks I will have to compile the drivers first and we will see. They work in Linux though. https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/pfsense-to-build-switches-with-10gbe.7044/page-2#post-66200 Good luck and make an informed decision before deciding on buying (or not). Regards, Jorge M. Oliveira

I would avoid the 10 port J1900 model if I need all of them to run at high speed. Jetway board usually comes with 2-4 ports and some models support the expansion cards, but the connectors will be an issue, just like my NF9HG-2930, the expansion slot is just a pci-e x1 slot, if you try to run full speed with 4xLAN add-on then you will experience packet drop when all of them running at high speed.

@Jailer: About the only thing that would concern me is the lack of 64 bit support. And concern may be a bit strong of a word to use. pfsense will eventually be going 64 bit only and 32 bit hardware will leave you with a dead end as far as an upgrade path goes. But for the price you got this board for it's worth it. Yeah, it does. I was looking into the ASRock AD2550R/U3S3 but it's a bit pricey…

thank you, I just ordered it

Confirmed, it was the cable.  BAH!  Always check layer 1 first.  Thank you

Sorry for the delay replying here - I have bce cards and yes also using IPsec.  We've managed to live with it for the time being (we can get crashes 2 or 3 times a day, or go a week and works fine) - hopeful that 2.3.1 will resolve the problem. Fingers crossed it's released this week. Peter

Hi Frank, I live in DE. Thanks for the hint with the rack enclosure. Seems to be a reasonable alternatives to buying a new server. The APU2 might be the next step. I hope my apu sticks not to much on the standard enclosure..

What board and what fan are you using? Most boards can automatically control the fan speed provided certain parameters are met. E.g. You may need to use a 4-wire PWM fan, and connect it to the CPU Fan header. Then activate the fan control in BIOS.

Thank you for the reply. I have since found out that the blocking of private networks is most probably why this fails. The modem seems to set a 192.168.x.x as a 30s lease before it hands out the real IP after some time. So I am good now. Thanks again.

@kesawi: EDIT: Have received the 8860 in under 60 hours from when I placed the order. That's pretty damn quick considering the distance it had to travel. Fan noise is pretty minimal. Thanks doe the order! I have two on my desk.

I am able to install pfSense now. The installer is accessible when one goes through serial console.

@lustenbe: Tried this option on my new APU2 HW and pfSense 2.3 with no success. There is no indication of temperatures at all… Is this a known problem in 2.3? Per @cmb, Currently not in 2.3 but is coming… https://github.com/pfsense/FreeBSD-src/pull/4

The portrayed motherboard has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, one controlled by an Intel I219V chip and the other one controlled by an Intel I211AT chip. its here  :D tnx 4 responding

@Jailer: You need a PCIe x4 or greater slot so you'll have to put it in 11 or 14. A very big thanks  ;D

Also I got yesterday a Dell OptiPlex 790, core i5 sandybridge, but my Intel based dual Ethernet card : HP NC7170 PCI-X Dual Port 1000T Gigabit Server Adapter is too long as it cannot be seated into the pci slot. Since it touches one of the heat sinks on the motherboard. So what times 1 pci express card or times 16 pci express should I buy?