First rule in government spending: Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?

there is GUI work that has to happen for someone to be able to enable the 'right' watchdog.

factory images (because we know what the hardware is) will have the right thing happen automatically.

@stephenw10:

I get 5-600Mbps through mine with the 1.7GHz CPU, or course is varies greatly by what traffic you are sending, packet size etc!

Tom's test results don't appear to claim that kind of speed with that chip as he is using the SL7SM. Are you getting that performance out of the on-board ports or the expansion ports?

Steve, what firmware are you using? I upgraded some of my boxes from 2.0.3 to 2.1.5 and I'm wondering if the 2.1.5 drivers fully support the hardware.

I am considering upgrading to 2.2.5. Do you think its worth it?

I am using WG pfSense routers for all my offices and for our datacenter gw. Should I be looking at other hardware that will run pfSense? Is what I have good enough for a commercial website(s) NAT gateway as well as a VPN portal?

Thanks BlueKobold.
It looks like a nice hardware, but a bit over my budget.

Yup, ^that.

"Quiet and rackable". Unfortunately these two things together are rare. Mostly because rack mount gear is expected to work in a data center jammed up against a load of other hot gear and they all have 40mm fans to fit in the 1U height so …. loud!

Our own current hardware (such as this: https://store.pfsense.org/SG-4860/ ) is fanless in desktop format but we have to fit fans in the rackmount version (https://store.pfsense.org/SG-4860-1U/ ) due to the restricted cooling and potentially hotter surroundings.

You might look at something that is desktop format with a rackmount option or even just use a shelf!

Steve

Different parts of FreeBSD are good at using more CPU cores. The network stack is getting better and FreeBSD 10(PFSense 2.2.x) has gained some benefits, and FreeBSD 11(PFSense 2.x/3.x) will have more.

The actual kernel itself can utilize a lot of CPUs for CPU bound work, but IO bound work is a work in progress.

I can get a 120GB ssd cheap enough but the msata is still quite pricey here by comparison. Yes I will be caching with squid, I am on an adsl2 line so I need all the help I can get.

I was only thinking on the mSATA due to the heating inside of the case, a SSD will be also very good
in this case for sure.

The xeon is my preferred choice of cpu and whilst I have come across reference to it booting fine in this board, I still don't fathom how that can be so given it has no gpu built in, possibly the AMT on the lan port is being used to configure and install the OS. In any case my backup is the i3 and it should be fast enough to handle my needs just a shame it has no AES-NI.

The OS will be installed then over the USB port and from a USB pen drive over the serial console
you will do this really fast and secure so no GPU or screen is needed on the pfSense box side.

The intel board does not support ECC memory, so its just plain old laptop ram. Would i really need more than 4GB though?

Really sad to hear about that, perhaps the Intel Xeon will be running with the other ram together also well
if you have luck.

The onboard nics should suffice as all i need is 1 wan and 1 lan port, at least thats all i think I need for this use case, is there a situation where more ports would come in handy?

Great. Good outcome.  :)

Steve

model of my pci express wifi adapter is tplink tl-wn781nd
with this model pfsense have big problem

thanks

Just to let you know that I am using 2 of similar HW CPU E8500 ( PC-Fujitu-Siemens ) and E8400 ( PC-Lenovo ) each with 3Gb RAM ( and 3 & 4 LAN's Gb ) connected also with OVPN site to site without any problem.
At the moment I am not running Gb WAN because I need a converter from fiber to Gb UTP or an Emulex LPe11002 PCIe card but I have no idea if pfsense support this Emulex hw.

Consumption is ~45W / h.

I have a 60GB MLC ssd

Take it and be happy together with the rest.

but I would prefer a physical device over a VM solution as i want to protect the host,

But on the PC on PCI(e) cards comes often without any storage, so where you want to connect the
storage device for holding the pfSense system? If you have a special card, please post a link or a
photo, so we could see if there are any connectors for storage devices.

Are there any other options besides the Innominate cards?

They are working well and out of the box without any issues, so there is no need to
tinker the wire new. You could be also interesting in a Cloud based pfSense firewall.

They look quite cool, but they seem to be aimed primarily at industrial machinery applications, and no-one lists prices.

And for co or home workers with a outside locked company PC or server where is a need only to get
rid of any other things such you were asking for.

Do the 4860/8860 have the same 750 Mbps limitation for PPPoE, or are they supposed to hit 1 Gbps due to higher CPU frequency?

This thread here would be fr sure not matching to 100% of all cases and customers or countries or IPSs
but it gives a short answer back to your question. Link 1 Link 2

Thank you! I have been searching for a while and had no idea what to call it

checked every think can it be because I am using a USB NIC on the WAN  and the ISP is a cable modem. Thanks

Weird, yeah sounds like one of the NICs has a hardware issue of some sort.

Or just two bad cables. :) Glad that fixed it.

We haven't even looked at it prior to now. At a quick review, it doesn't work in 2.3 either on that hardware. That's so far down my list of priorities it won't get any attention for 2.3 at a minimum. If someone wants to dig into it, you're more than welcome. It's either a hardware issue or a FreeBSD issue.

Do the axiomtek devices front panel work with pfSense? They look really neat

Not the VPN module for sure because it it based on the Intel QuickAssist which is not inserted
in the pfSense code now, the others work like expected as normal LAN Ports (NIC modules)
with Intel NICs. Their appliances generally working great together with pfSense since a long
time period, as you can read here; Axiomtek NA-810A/B

Or if you mean not the module bays but more the LED lights you could ask in this thread here
where someone is using the both variants of the NA342 together as a cluster, one with Intel
Celeron J1900 and one with the Intel Atom E3825 his name is @klauskurz; axiomtek na-342

PC Engnies APU2 Board since january 2016 ~250 €
Another case for the APU + 2 LAN Ports & SSD/HDD like the APU but + ~150 €
Jetway Board only ~$199
Varia store dual rackmount box ~60 €
4 Port appliance ~$299
5 Port appliance ~$305
Axiomtek

NA341 ~425 € NA342 & NA342R ~280 € or ~ price unknown NA361 & NA361R ~650 € or ~850 €

P.S. in january 2016 the APU2B4 is coming out and that would be much better then the older APU ones.

Something tells me OPs old laptop isn't USB 3.0.