I tried giving 2.2 a shot… no luck, my comp will not recognize live CD install, just gives me "Disk boot failure" message on screen.  I tried different versions of it and using iso.gz files with no luck either.  Ran out of CD's to burn (only had a few left), and my comp will not do flashdrive.

I figure that I will get a 5 port Asus server board and a Xeon cpu, probably will solve all the problems I am having now.  But that is way in the future.

As long as you're not terminating the VPN then the pfSense box doesn't have to do any encryption/decryption, it's just moving packets. You should have no problem passing 50Mbps with almost any hardware. If you decide to run any packages like Squid or Snort then things start to require more horsepower.
By the way although pfSense suppports PPTP directly (terminating) it's very definitely not recommended because:
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/PPTP_VPN

Steve

Now my Alix is back in use, got to 2.2 through usb boot. And surprise-surprise: we have a working thermal sensor  8)
Seems my cpu is hoovering round 51-52°C, and that is without added heatsinks (not arrived yet…. patience is a virtue)
This is without much load (almost none), and PowerD not activated. It tends to go up rather fast when asking actions from the system (packages, configuration changes in the gui, ...) but equally drops pretty fast. (good thing, means the heat gets dissipated ;))
I activated PowerD for testing (as quoted by drclaw), but doesn't seem to make much difference when there's not much going on (seems logic)
I'll report back when those chinese heatsinks are mounted.....

ps: enjoying the 103% disk usage here !  (I always love it when a system gives me more than it should ;D)

2.2alpha.JPG
2.2alpha.JPG_thumb

@charliem:

@adamthepolak:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856205007OEM 2550L2D-MxPC
will the Dual Broadcom 57788 NICs give me troubles?
with 4 or 8 gbs of ram this will come to $250-$300

These Broadcom NICs, and these "OEM Production" machines in particular, work just fine with pfsense.

I've purchased two of them with good luck… the only thing you might want to consider is getting a quieter CPU fan. That said - if you're brave you could probably just run it without a fan - doesn't get particularly hot.

Hi Harumph!

Yes thank you. I will have to check this again when I go to Turkmenistan again. Probably in about 3 weeks I will be back to try and see if we can increase the internet connectivity by using teh 3G cards.

I had a lot of issues with the 3G cards available in TM so I will take extra with me and test them too.

Regards,

@allendyb:

How is it enough for 100 desktop computers share a dual lan firewall, why not considering making it 4 lan or 6 lan?

Because, even with a Single-WAN router, the bottleneck is usually the WAN connection itself, that is unless you have a connection faster than 1gbit!

@Sam71:

As far as I can tell the TP-Link ones don't do bridge mode!

Hence the need to run OpenWRT on them rather then the TP-Link firmware.

A lot more messing about but they are a lot cheaper and once you have openwrt on there you can do whatever you want.

Steve

Thank guys.  I got it working by flashing 2.0.3 (i386) from here. After that, I was able to update to 2.1.2 using the standard nanobsd update image.  I see 2.1.3 is available now, I may try the auto-upgrade option. So far it's working ok!  :)

Update: I updated to 2.1.3. So far so good.

TCP Checksum is verified for every packet afaik

No mention of those even in head:
http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/dev/usb/serial/u3g.c?revision=260534&view=markup

You may be able to do something with usb_modeswitch.
http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/bb/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1572

For anyone who hasn't read this is looks like the OP 'solved' this problem using 3x Win XP VMs!
http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/24e5xq/my_proudest_hack_so_far_multiple_verizon/

I salute your janky setup.  :D

Steve

If it just stops working completely check for mbuf exhaustion on the dashboard or:

[2.1.2-RELEASE][root@pfsense.fire.box]/root(2): sysctl dev.em.0.mbuf_alloc_fail dev.em.0.mbuf_alloc_fail: 0

Also check the system logs.

Should always be 0. Obviously look at em1-3 also. If that is happening then try:
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Tuning_and_Troubleshooting_Network_Cards#Intel_igb.284.29_and_em.284.29_Cards

Steve

Can you please update if this motherboard worked for you?

I am looking at building a pfSense box with this hardware…I too want to use a SATA HDD due to how I am hoping to use this:

firewall proxy (reason for HDD) SIP Proxy cache (other reason for HDD) VPN "server" Dual-WAN

@chercheur:

And…I think pFsense still uses the CF card to store his default logging ?
Or am I wrong ?

Logs, RRD data, DHCP leases, all that sort of changing data is stored on /var/ and /tmp memory file systems in RAM.
You can set the system to write RRD and/or DHCP lease data to the CF card at the interval you want (or never). On clean shutdown RRD and DHCP data is written to CF so it can be recovered during the next boot. If you suddenly remove the power, then that data is gone - you will have just the RRD and DHCP that was last saved to CF.
Logs start again at each boot. If you want to save log records, then log to a syslog server.

Like I say don't take my word for it.  ;)
Large scale wifi is not something I've ever dealt with.

Steve

The Atheros driver, ath(4), is backported from a newer version so you have more choices there. For example:
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=67772.msg398548#msg398548

You'll probably get better performance from an external AP though.

Steve

It'll work well on those. But unless your electricity is free, a new low-power system of some sort, probably an Atom, would pay for itself in its lifetime in power savings vs. that beast of a space heater.

I agree with the others who like the Intel Atom C2758 (Rangeley) or similar.

I'm also going to build a dedicated firewall and will be making use of the new Atom.
It's one of their "7-Year product life", so I know their support will be better and ease of getting parts later down the line than most.
I'm just waiting for the next major upgrade of pfsense.

I generally avoid Realtek NICs, support has always been abit crap at best and performance about the same, but maybe that will be different with the next upgrade.

I did considered the older Atoms, but I realised they were just powerful enough for my means, but were anywhere from 2-4 years old now and still costing me a similar amount as the new Intel Atom (I live in England,UK). Why spend money on a dedicated hardware for a firewall, if it's not overkill.
You need and want it to last, you need to be able to get replacement parts and the cost is not that different, also with all that more power any packages you want to use, you have the freedom to use. You never know what the future might require these firewalls to do.

Thank you!