First a question for the OP:  Where did you buy your card? We got ours at techforless.com and they are not cooperating.  Neither is Intel. Here is what I know: You can get the basic ethernet to work by adding the PCI ID's to the e1000e-0.4.1.7 driver that you can download from intel.  A little hacking in e1000e_hw.h and netdev.c but it works. Second, you can get some bypass functions sorta working using the drivers from silicom.co.il for their 83571EB based cards.  I would recommend getting someone else card, silicom or interfacemasters.com.  Intel certainly doesn't want to support this product.

@val123456: Another option is a "consumer grade" Inspiron.  I'm in the states, and the 530 is often VERY cheap.  I got the small form factor case, popped three extra intel NICs in it (standard size, one PCIe, two PCI, I just removed the brackets to make them fit :-). Note:  1.2 did not seem to like the built-in Intel NIC, but the 1.2.1 releases are working fine. Colin Niiiiice :P !!! I checked this right now, and it seems nice !!! Thank you for the advice !

Many thanks for your clarifications. @wallabybob: You're not in luck with the Motorola WLAN adapter. None of the standard WLAN drivers recognised it. The clue is the ugen0 in vga0: <generic isa="" vga="">at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0 ugen0: <cybertan 0="" 2="" motorola="" wireless="" usb="" adapter,="" class="" 0,="" rev="" 2.00="" 0.00,="" addr="">on uhub0 Timecounters tick every 1.000 msec</cybertan></generic> ugen is a "generic" USB device driver, not a network device driver.

thank you so much! ;D @GruensFroeschli: Try reading the stickies, the docs and the faq: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,7001.0.html In your case the doc on how to set up pfSense on a WRAP should be the right thing to start with. http://pfsense.basis06.com/download//tutorials/wrap_install/wrap_install.htm

haha thank you. Just wanted to check…. So I have room to grow. Good to know. Thanks

Have you considered the new Via Processor yet? I’m not a big fan of Via but the new “Mini”-processor looks quite decent: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/atom-nano-review.ars (yes, it does use more power but take a peek at the benchmarks.)

Thanks friend

Shouldn't cause any stability issues unless/until it kills sectors on your CF. BIG_ILLEGAL_REQUEST is "normal", it might show up but it should still go on. If it doesn't, it probably isn't related to that message. See http://devwiki.pfsense.org/wikka.php?wakka=BootTroubleShooting

If it works in FreeBSD 7.0, it'll work in 1.2.1.

It's mostly dependent on throughput required.  See: http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=49

We're not really sure which ones are supported. You can check and see what's supported in lcdproc, everything but the picolcd hardware should work. We'll probably put a call for LCD hardware out to solicit contributions so we can really put our lcdproc package to the test and enhance it. Might see that on the blog in the next month or so.

It might be overheating as well. You didn't mention having a hard drive in the case, that's the only time I've seen 4801's have heat related issues, but occasionally adding a hard drive will increase the temp enough to make them unstable under high load as the CPU generates more heat as well. If you've eliminated the power supply, and overheating isn't an issue, it's definitely a flaky board.

If it works in 1.3 it'll work in 1.2.1.

@familyguy: @Cry: I'd suggest a look at this MSI motherboard.  Not only does it have 3 onboard Intel based Gbit ports, but it has a PCI-E x16, a PCI-E x1 and a PCI slots (and takes a dual core processor).  From the Intel specification of the controller, it's a rev 2.3 PCI slot. (I was looking at this when I thought my FX5620 was a brick) Has anyone actually tried one of these with pfsense?  Looks like a great choice for a "busy" firewall, especially for people doing lots of VPNs since you can stash a mobile core2duo in there. Best, We build server appliances using these boards, but I would not recommend them if you're looking to utilize the pci-express slot.  It is a PEG slot ONLY.  Additionally, Intel is not making the Socket M processors anymore, so it's increasingly difficult to find them.

@David_W: It is probably best seen as an experimental feature, especially until it's been checked into the FreeBSD repository. Hopefully that will happen before the FreeBSD 7.1 release process starts. As I don't follow freebsd-hackers, I'm not sure whether a committer has started working with the author to get this checked in. Pawel Jakub Dawidek was going to review and commit the code, but his soekris box died. It appears the code is currently in limbo… UPDATE: The glxsb driver is now in RELENG_7 @plamaiziere: Yes. The crypto framework does not take care about the performance of the drivers. It selects the driver with the fewest active sessions. If you have a hifn you should not use the glxsb driver, i think. That would seem to be a problem with adding the driver to the stock kernel- if you had a VPN1411 in your Alix, using a kernel with glxsb in it could lower your crypto speed. Perhaps an option to load the module that would turn on glxsb_load="YES"

Thanks all of you, I will try to check the different options that I have now. I will let you know what will be the hardware that I will use and ask you your opinions if you don't mind.

i think my intel nic had a hardware malfunction, cause it did the same thing on another platform, and I dug another up that did give me the full amount of nics. the realtek - i think that is just a bsd driver limitation, and realtek is a pos in general as far as *nix support goes.

You could just use a vlan switch