first of all you have to try to set up the definitive modem mode of your stick. It might be done using usbswitch software.

Try it and see, you already have the hardware. If you really don't need anything other than captive portal you may be able to disable a lot of things to improve performance.

Steve

Exactly. Realisticly to get 16 ports using NICs alone you're going to have use four quad port cards and they're not cheap!  ;)

Steve

Im also on a 1Gbit/1Gbit line.  On 2.1.4 in transparent bridge,  with SNORT,  pfblocker.  Having webserver, mail and some vps running behind it.

I was surprised how demanding a gigabit line actually was,  i cannot max out  my CPU,  but its close when i throw all at it.  and if you are planning on 1Gbit and " want to be able to hammer the connection 24/7 with no hassle."  Then without beeing an expert in this i would recommend better hardware,  especially if you plan on using snort and other heavy packages.

My build:  e3-1240 v2,  asus P8B-E/4L,  8gb ecc ram,  using the onboard 4 x 82574L.

Before you buy hardware for this,  be sure to lookup the hardware to be sure its supportet :)

Thanks for your reply.

It's been in production for about 6 months, mfi0 wasn't monitored before but popped up one day when I logged into the admin interface.

Oddly enough, it's disappeared again today!

I am still on 2.1, so will try updating to 2.1.4 when we have downtime available.

I see there are 2 Hyper-V hosts. I assume they have Quad Gigabit both.
You'll not get more than 1Gbit on server-client connection, but You can get more when server-multiple-clients are connected or/and they use different IP subnets.
Here is good explanation how to use Network Teaming with Intels:
http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-009747.htm
Note, that according to Best Practices You should have at least 2 separate Gigabit switches for redundancy.
You may hit internal forwarding limit on this single switch.. (at least - We DID ;D now I know that Gigabit doesn't always mean Gigabit..)
You should use LACP (dynamic) or no-LACP (static) Link Aggregation which has to be supported by the switch.
SQUID can mess up things since it's redirecting requests on LAN interface..

EDIT: In Your case You should be interested in Virtual Machine Load Balancing (VMLB)

@Smokeshow:

We are running quite a few A1SRi-2758F systems on 2.1.3 (they are using the i354 as well). One thing I have found is that you will need to do a bit of tuning to get the cards working great. I had some major slow-dows until I discovered this information. I was always maxing out the mbuf table and causing kernel panics. I followed the instructions here, but here is what you need to do:

In /boot/loader.conf.local - Add the following (or create the file if it does not exist):

kern.ipc.nmbclusters="131072" hw.igb.num_queues=1

That will increase the amount of network memory buffers, and make the card use one queue instead of multiple queues, to reduce the strain on the system.

Tuning for NICs isn't going to help this situation, though changes like the ones you mentioned (well, at least the first one) are necessary for any system with this many cores and NICs.

The C2758 lacks the CPU power to do more than 1Gbit or so in a single thread.  That isn't going to change until pfSense 2.2 drops and is based on FreeBSD 10 with multi-threaded pf.  Gonzopancho posted a couple weeks back that they had also found a way to get 12% more out of pf which will help even more.

@robina80:

now i understand there BS marketing jargon , when they say AV500, the internface is only 10/100, so you will never ever see 500mbps speeds

should have really got the AV500 gigabit, least i would have got 500mbps out of them as the interface is a gig

i cant believe i have been had!!!

Doubt it.  Think of it like WiFi.  Your link speed may be 300Mbit/s but the odds of you getting more than 40-50% of that, even with line of sight to the AP, are pretty long.  The absolute best of the AV500 adapters are capable of about 250Mbit/s WHEN PLUGGED INTO THE SAME POWER STRIP.  They all drop to 60-80Mbit/s in more realistic residential scenarios.

If you really need networking over power lines then I'd suggest waiting a month or two for the AV2 MIMO adapters to start hitting the streets (based on QCA7500).  These should be branded as AV1000 or similar and should be capable of 2-3x the rate of older adapters and be able to maintain higher speeds in less optimal scenarios.

No DNS?
Invalid gateway?
Faulty one of these SATA drives? (it happends)

Why using RAID0 on a SERVER instead of RAID10??
RAID controller model/type?

What exactly are you trying?

Assuming you are running a full install there isn't a serial console unless you've enabled it in System: Advanced: Admin Access:
With that enabled I would expect to see it via the RJ45 port since the roamer module should start up in pass-through mode.
To use the LCD from pfSense it looks like you need to put the roamer module in shell mode and then talk to it using  cu.

Steve

Thanks.

The router was in place to load balance before I went with pfsence, so it remained.  There are a couple network connections in front of the pfsence box too, so it was just left as is.

I prefer a little overkill :-)

The two D2700 boards I have will not allow a 64-bit OS to install.  I've tried with Windows, different versions of Ubuntu and pfSense.  The boards are from different manufactures, but both purchased at the same time.  Every OS tells me the same thing, it says the hardware does not support 64-bit software.

The Broadcom BCM5720 NICs should be supported by the bge(4) driver.

Steve

Zoom 5715 for DSL if you want pound on it and never see it lock up.

Motorola for cable.

PFsense will run on just about any hardware that is still alive and functioning today.

For example, I have several installations in various ranges of performance, two are running supermicro 1U units with 2xL5420 CPU and 16 GB ram (production units in colocation DC each serving 1/2 rack nodes with countless VM's / CT's) huge overkill but dirt cheap, and have yet to bottom out on GB lines with traffic in the range of 15+TB data/month, and bursts of throughput approaching 750MBps 500MBps +/- sustained.

To an ASRock- phenom X4 home office use in front of several nodes containing various file servers, git repos and test CT's , all the way down to an age old AMD 500MHz 500MB ram serving 27 cam CCTV, several wireless repeaters and the local wired boxes. Which is a bit underpowered itself, yet flawless existence, for the most part. The latter gets a bit bound up at times, for obvious reasons.

Get creative, grab anything you have laying around, no HDD just use a thumb drive and a couple GB nics.

Yes, 4G is enough.
You need a null modem cable.  For example, a DB9 to USB serial adapter.  Make sure the cable is null modem, or you buy a DB9 F to DB9 F null modem adapter.
http://www.gooze.eu/howto/alix-apu-settings-howto/introduction