You could just use a vlan switch

We did have some install failures on BSD and pfSense, we didn't think much about it except just replacing it and moving on.  It could be that issue.  Our hardware was older p4 2.4 ibm's and hp's from storage.  So we just assumed bad drive and moved on.  You may have a point here though.

My production firewall is also an R200 - if you are after an inexpensive rack mount machine for pfSense, I think it's well worth a look.

The built in NICs are Broadcom server grade gigabit parts - they are well supported under FreeBSD, and work with 802.1q VLANs and ALTQ, the system that pfSense uses for traffic shaping.

I think Dell USA are a little 'sharp' in not including the rack mounting rails - they're at extra cost. The sliding rapid rails are particularly good if you have a square hole rack - they fit into the rack without tools, and allow you to slide the server out for maintenance (make sure your rack has the necessary reserve of stability!).

If you have a built in SATA optical drive, you will need to use a pfSense build based on FreeBSD 6.3 (there's a snapshot that is 1.2-RELEASE built on FreeBSD 6.3) or 7.0 (1.2.1-BETA or 1.3-ALPHA-ALPHA), as the ICH9 SATA controller isn't recognised under FreeBSD 6.2.

If you want hardware RAID 1, order the SAS 6/iR controller - Dell's BIOS doesn't support AHCI.

The DRAC 4/P option is rather nice - you can manage the machine via the Ethernet interface in the DRAC card, including powering it up and down, forcing reboot, a remote console (keyboard, mouse and screen via your web browser) and virtual media (you can mount an ISO file or optical drive on your computer as an optical drive on the server). Of course, there's a 'chicken and egg' situation with a DRAC in a firewall - you can't remote manage the server if there's no Internet connection. Still, it has its uses - in my case, the server rack is remote from my desk, but I can manage the servers from my workstation as they all have DRAC cards.

problem solved,

I've tried what dotdash suggested, but it is weird because the url that Contingency gave was similar.

Thank you.

The PCI bus and the CPU will limit the speed (my ex1000eg)

In the 1.3 version you can traffic shape between any interface.

Do you get Gigabit speeds out of it?

According to the LinITX product page it is supported in the recent snapshots.

Which is good, as my FX5620 seems to have just failed (the NIC lights are on, but no beeps or BIOS screen) so I'm about to have to buy a replacement.  If I can buy a compatible model then I won't have to do any major reconfiguration of pfSense when I move the Microdrive over.

it should be 512mb…

i said should because i have 2 identical 256mb ram banks  and my ip330 see only one bank... even if i reverse the ram in banks... very strange...

the 2 ram banks are the same brand/ type and they works great: i tested them on ip330 one by one but if i put them together it see only one bank... i tryed varios bios and jumper settings...

Someone could help me...

Man, I have almost an identical setup at my Father's house.  I set it up about 2 months ago.  He has like 3 or 4 pc's hanging off of it.  It is like a p2 400 or 450 with only 256 megs ram.  20 gig drive.  Runs great, I tested it at my house for about 2 months too.  I have 5 pc's 360, wii, and a nin Ds all on it.  The pc should be fine.  It could be an issue with your NIC, or your Modem.  You may have to manually set your NIC to 100/full or whatever, test and try.  It will probably fix your problem.  Unless it is just traffic on your network, 30 pc's is a lot for 1 box of that speed, and only 2 meg dsl…30 ppl used to highspeed would be wearing that 2megs out...I'd plug one device in and test then mess with speed/duplex settings on that interface on pfSense.  There are a couple postings here for that.

Looks interesting.

I have a VIA EPIA-EK8000EG and that should be the same card:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/mainboards/motherboards.jsp?motherboard_id=420
and it works with my 2.5" samsung harddrive (ide). Had a lot of troubles at the beginning, but a change of ata-cable solved the problem. It's great with dual nic:s, which works. I have used it with both 1.01, 1.2 and today 1.2.1.

I'd love to see if pfSense can scale that high.  8x PCIe slots are no biggie.  The P45/X38/X48 chipsets all have two 8x PCIe slots if not 16x on the northbridge.  If you're building a firewall, you wouldn't "waste" the x16 slots on dual graphic cards anyway.  Just get a PCIe x1 or PCI video board.

I don't have experience with 10G cards yet, but I imagine the CPU would indeed be the limit if you approached the maximum speed.

You can get a bit of the best of both worlds by going for a mini-ITX type setup with everything passively cooled.  This means that you're using off-the-shelf kit (so it can be fixed/replaced easily) but power consumption and heat are low.  The flip side is that purchase prices are higher, and CPU power will be lower (for passively cooled).

I'm running an FX5620, which is a custom case running a fairly standard motherboard, but off of a Microdrive rather than either CF or hard disk.  That means that I get the low noise/power/heat of a CF based solution, but can add packages as you can for a hard disk solution (as, that's what it is).  The lifespan is probably less than that of a hard disk, but so far so good ;)

I (and somebody I know who's spent far too long working with large ISPs) have had mixed success with TCP offloading.  When it works, it's great.  But I've had lots of strange situations where it breaks things and identify that ToE is the cause can take a while.  Intel cards seem to be better in that regard.

Well, as of right now the computer is working great. I have not had the problems any more. The identifiers are re0 and re1, so they are the realtek cards. After the upgrade I have not had a single problem with the computer. I am getting my full speed from my internet. This is for a home office, not a data center or anything like that. I move about 220-260GB total a month, and since the upgrade everything is very smooth. The update fixed everything, but if I do have to replace the cards in the future I will keep in mind that the realtek cards don't work as great as the intel cards, but maybe by then that will be fixed, who knows? Since everything is working great, I'm going to mark this thread as solved. Thanks for your help everyone.  ;D

After 1 year I report my experience: no failures, no reboots required, no issues, no crashes … simply perfect!
Now has 126days of uptime with Pfsense version 1.2 embedded.

You can't go wrong with Intel cards, they are develloping the drivers themselves so the whole catalog is running. (except some onboard)

search the forum, I seen something just like this here before.  The other thing would be to try to sullrich's 6.3 verison.  I running it now it's awesome and very stable.  Seems to gotten my DELL SC440 to work with all interfaces perfectly.

RC