Those Broadcom NICs suck (everywhere, not just under pfSense).  I just had a conversation about that yesterday afternoon with a couple Dell reps during a presentation on their upcoming servers.  I mentioned how they just start to drop packets under load and then eventually take out the system.  I use the 2900/2950 systems for my ESXi boxes and I've disabled all the Broadcom parts and replaced them with Intel Server NICs.

With modern wear-leveling algorithms you "should" not hit the write-limitation. Assume a disk of 4 GB. If you write constantly with 50 MB/s to the disk you would write every ~80 seconds to the same cell. 4096/50 = 81.92 Assume conservatively that you can write 100'000 times to a single cell on an expensive card (some claim to be able to write 1'000'000 times) 100'000 * 80s = 8'000'000s 8'000'000s / 60 = 133'333.3 min 133'333.3 min / 60 = 2222'.2 hours 2222.2 hours /24 = 92.6 day So if you write constantly with the maximum speed to a disk with a conservative assumption of maximum 100'000 writecycles the card would start to show first signs of failure after 93 days. Of course if you take a 16 GB card (*4), "only" 10 MB/s (*5, still a lot of disk traffic…) and 1'000'000 writecycles (10) you have 93 days 1054 =18518 day 18518 / 365 = 50.7 years. But the more expensive cards are about the same price as a harddisk ;)

What version of pfSense? If you haven't tried 1.2.3 please do so before you report back. You can download a snapshot from http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD7/RELENG_1_2/?C=M;O=D If you have the problem with pfsense 1.2.3 please post the startup output and a list of the PCI devices in the system. I presume you have at least one working interface so you can attach via the web GUI. If so, you can get the requested output by using the Diagnostics -> Command menu item and give the command dmesg ; pciconf -l -v.

http://doc.pfsense.org Search 4 ACPI Top result = HOWTO disable acpi Answer To alleviate the problem, I added the following line to /boot/device.hints at the very bottom: hint.acpi.0.disabled="1" And, After trying to boot his 1.0.1 box with ACPI disabled (via the FreeBSD boot menu), it came up in under a minute. To semi-permanently disable ACPI, they should make the same change mentioned above. Modify /boot/device.hints, and add this entry at the very bottom: hint.acpi.0.disabled="1"

Yes I deploy Alix systems at many customer sites.  Just looking for something even more portable which could accompany a VOIP phone.

thanks for the guide but it still wont boot after trying the Boot_Troubleshooting guide F1 pfSense Default: F1 \ blinking wont boot following this post http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,13671.0.html they seem to be having same problem and think it might be because of the LBA not being able to set it manually, because of something with pfsense and the way it uses LBA. I can install  and boot FreeBSD 7.1 with no problem but not pfsense

That's a neat board.  What kind of case do you have it installed in?  Please post back if you get it working.

I run a 40g 2.5" drive inside the standard ALIX case with a full install of pfSense including squidGuard.  The ALIX has plenty of power for web filtering in a small office.  The hard drive is fastened to the case top with double sided thermal tape, and a 6" 44 pin ide cable connects the drive.(no separate power required)  If you want to see pictures they are available here:  http://www.geardiary.com/2008/02/17/a-open-source-router…with-more-power-the-lx800-40-review/ On an ALIX, a full install of pfSense uses less than 10 watts of power, with the cost of electricity these days it will pay for itself in about 18 months.  If you don't want to enjoy the fun of doing it yourself you can buy a pre-assembled firewall at http://nw-ds.com/products/firewall/lx800-40.html  For those that enjoy assembling hardware, instructions for setting up pfSense on an ALIX with an IDE drive are available at http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,13509.0.html

The Intel PRO/1000MT Dual card uses the same chipset as your ABN-172, so I doubt you'll see a performance difference between the two. Sounds like your CPU is just underpowered, though the 'ifconfig link0' option might eeke out a little more performance. It doesn't seem to be enabled by default on my installs. For PCI-X in PCI slots, the specification says that it should always work, and in my experience it does, even with things like vendor-specific RAID cards designed for specific server chassis, so I think it's a fairly risk-free assumption, but there's a chance it won't work, as ever. One thing to watch out for is that there isn't always physical clearance behind the PCI slots for the 64-bit extension to hang over the edge. Make sure your motherboard doesn't have any capacitors or headers or anything like that using that space; many microATX boards seem to put things there (out of necessity, obviously).

@wallabybob: Concerning the claimed differences between the Intel PRO/1000 PT "desktop" and "server" NICs I confess to being a little unconvinced that all those differences noted actually reflect a significant difference in capability when used with the FreeBSD drivers. For instance, both documents claim the same chipset but VLAN support is listed only for the "server" version. (Maybe there is a board jumper or configuration ROM difference that disables VLAN support on the desktop variant.) PCI Express Hotplug support is listed for the server variant but FreeBSD doesn't support PCI Express hotplug. The server datasheet extols the virtues of "receive side scaling" but I can't see any evidence this is supported on FreeBSD. Some of the noted differences are under the category of "advanced software features" in the datasheets which presumably means software needs some smarts to provide these features which may mean there isn't really any hardware difference affecting the feature. For example, the driver in "desktop" Windows may not provide link aggregation whereas the driver in "server" Windows might. Is this another example of a supplier feeling they can get away with charging more for a product with a "server" tag over the same product (or effectively the same) product with a "desktop" tag? Im just an amaterur, but its not unusual for manufactuers to provide same chip on 2 different stuff and charge 2x more for one just because there are software enabled stuff on the expensive one. We should all have a little critisim to products and not just tag along with the information they provide us with.

Wireless sticky Edit: after looking at you link it seems the card is a draf n card. You won't see drivers for that for a while under FreeBSD.

Thank Gertjan and dotdash!

@simby: Hi, which usb wifi key do you recomend or do you use? is ti ok? Do you want it to run as an access point? If so, I think you might be limited to devices supported by the ural driver or the rum driver. I haven't been able to source any devices supported by the ural driver, you might have better fortune. A good place to start with this is the FreeBSD supported hardware. list found at http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.1R/hardware.html. You should then check the capabilities of the driver by reading its man page through http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi For example, you look through the supported hardware list and see zyd driver supports some wireless devices so you then look up the zyd man page to see if it supports operation as an access point (if you care). I appreciate there may be good reasons you asked about USB rather than PCI, but if you can configure your system so you have a PCI slot for a wireless card I would take that option. Its possible to get a PCI card with the well regarded and well supported Atheros chipset for somewhat less than regular retail price of USB wireless devices that are supported in FreeBSD. Note FreeBSD (and hence pfSense) doesn't yet support any "wireless N" devices.

I hear ya, i have a few HP 4000M's that have been installed since the early 90's that have been solid. I like that may of there products have gone the modular approach, take the 4000 you buy the chassis and you can fill it with what ever ports you want.

@ephesius: Hi everyone, I recently installed pfsense on a dell poweredge 1550. There are four fans inside and they are incredibly loud, is there a way to slow down the rpm's of these fans to quiet them without buying new fans to replace them? Thanks I just silenced my Dell Poweredge 2550. Weld 68ohm's resistance between the plus pole (the fan have red or yellow cables I think). Took the noise to atleast half!

Have you tried version 1.2.3? Its still labelled "PRERELEASE"  but considered suitable for production use - see http://blog.pfsense.org/?p=377 I presume by "latest stable version" you mean 1.2.2. The main page of the web GUI shows the software version

With the specs you gave FreeSWITCH will easily work with 2-3 calls even with transcoding. Without transcoding with the specs you mentioned you could likely get 20-30 calls on the system and possibly more.

Good to know.  I've got one of those cards sitting at home from when I ripped apart my Actiontec a year ago.

Thanks for the reply, that clarified what I thought to be the case (but couldn't find anywhere)! Strange that the keyboard wouldn't work in minicom though… I managed to use a USB CD and a HDD to get the unit into testing, it's using an extra 0.05A with the HDD but it's only using 0.17A anyway (240V). I'll have another go when I get more time (and maybe look into getting a cheap-ish/32GB SSD to replace the HDD.