Yeah, it was Cat 5.  I did not realize I even had Cat 5 laying around, but with the Cat 6 cable everything is still working well.

The 88W8688 is supported by the Linux Libertas driver (see http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/libertas As yet I haven't found out if the driver supports Access Point mode. There is at least one firmware module to be loaded. It should be possible to load the firmware in a platform independent way. I don't know the protocol for porting a Linux driver to FreeBSD. Having the sources for an already working driver would make the creation of a FreeBSD driver a fair bit easier than starting from scratch.

http://www.networkliquidators.com/webwiz/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9360

I am not concerned about ARP flooding… I dont have any workstations or other things behind my L7 firewall...

@evildave:

I've seen a couple places that claim availability of the X7SPA-H in the $170 range, but they're in the US and I haven't bothered to verify that.

Check out Provantage - http://www.provantage.com/supermicro-x7spa-h~7SUPM362.htm

JAD3INLANG from the store
listed as JAD3INLANG-PB on Jetway site
I payed 67 eur. They sport the Intel 82541PI controller.

You should consider moving up to a machine with pci-e and higher bus speed.  An Atom CPU is going to be a hindrance as you will be working it pretty hard while a 1066Mhz bus dual or quad core intel will easily have enough power to handle this load.

Maybe even more importantly, get GOOD nic cards not cheap broadcom cards.  I like the intel pro cards, very fast and reliable.

Right now, it seems increasingly likely that I will just get a Firebox x700, but only if the Realtek Ethernet problems have been fixed. If possible I would use an old thin client off of eBay but 1. I'm not sure how easy it is to install alternative native OSes on it and 2. I don't see any that have dual Ethernet ports. Pity :(

Hi Fakster,

have a look at the user manual:
http://www.nexcom.com/ProductModel_Download.aspx?id=97c0aec4-d471-49af-b4f5-78f12f0c57a8

The fix to the issue seems to be to disable LRO

echo "dev.igb.0.enable_lro=0" >>/etc/sysctl.conf

echo "dev.igb.1.enable_lro=0" >>/etc/sysctl.conf

And reboot.

This fixed the issue for me.  Of course, one looses the benefits of LRO….

Appendix: it was definitely the usb CF adaptor, switching to the new one made all of the other 4GB CFs work.

Thx for the help but none of the boards are avaiable in the EU anymore.

Info on hardware selection and sizing here:
http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=49

100/5 may not be that far down the road…. so I guess I shall investigate further.

:)

@jahonix:

@Morris:

…and preferably no moving parts. I wanted a PC ... to log to an HDD...

How does that correlate?

That's probably my pfSense noobness shining though. I was under the impression that the embedded version is less flexible in terms of lifetime read-writes; logging, package installation etc.

I'm not sure I understand what your question/concern is.

Putting this switch between your pfSense and your clients should of course work in a standard configuration.
Your clients can get IPs assigned by DHCP from your pfSense.

The question is: how does your configuration look like and will it work in that scenario.

(best anyone can answer with the given details:  SRW224G4, pfSense, DHCP)