Hello, here's another post about what hardware is cheapest and best.
I have a 1G up / 1G down fiber connection with three apache web servers (1k visits/day with streaming video on a heavy day) and a home network behind it. I'd like to run a Squid reverse proxy on the pfSense install.
My question: what kind of hardware am I looking at to make this run smoothly? Up until now I've been squeaking by with an Asus N56U, but it's starting to go down every other day or so now, probably because my network traffic is picking up.
My options:
Buy a pfSense Appliance. I emailed sales and they tell me I should go with a SG-4860 for $200 more than the SG-2440. But, of course they would say that. Double the RAM, double the Atom cores, and more Gb ports. But is it necessary?
Build my own. If I do this, what kind of minimum specs do I need? Pretty sure I can beat the pfSense specs and save money. For those recommending this path, would a 2 NIC system + unmanaged Gb switch be appreciably slower than a 4-6 NIC system sans switch?
May be you'll be interested to my new build?
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=109694.0