hi thanks for the help. as of now, still trying to get everything basic up and will b going for a test run soon. the biggest problem with the users now is torrents n worms/trojans lurking around the network. thanks.

k cool ill check that out cheers.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a marvel driver available that doesn't have the one or the other issue. Scott already tried hard to get it working and tested every available driver to no success. Atm marvel chipsets and pfSense don't seem to be a good combination.  :(

You can manually assign macadresses through hidden config.xml flags (though I was pretty sure we have some code in place that does that automatically for invalid macs as this is a prolem with nokia IP330 boxes as well). Have a look at http://faq.pfsense.com/index.php?action=artikel&cat=10&id=38&artlang=en&highlight=hidden how to do this. Regarding the Marvel chipsets, the drivers seem to have lots of problems. Scott did a lot of testing to get a nexcom with marvels to work but there doesn't seem to exist any marvel driver that dioesn't have the one or the other issue atm.

dipswitches haven't been bad either  ;D

The netgear stuff is pretty cheap. I personally never had issues with them but I also haven't used them in stacked configs yet. HP shouldn't be too expensive either.

This is not a pfSense issue, but rather a Freebsd issue. Post on their forums to see if support for that hardware is planned.

Only i386 versions of pfSense exists currently. No, there is no plans to support sparc.

Oh, and if anyone knows of any other makes of "USB modules" like this (that can be plugged into the motherboard), some pointers would be great. I guess, in the end, all I really want is to get something compatible that I can house inside the case and will accept a pigtail antenna.

1. Yep, regular usb1.1 ports 2. Could but haven't found a decent use for it 3. Why not make your own?…..takes about 20 minutes with a soldering iron 4. Yes they are but since you can still manage vi the RS232 port this is more for convienence 5. I've used a k6-2 380 oc'd to 400 w/out a problem 6. Good luck with the bios flashing, didn't find anything decent 7. Yep 8. Some of the dip switches set the RS232 configuration while other sequences offer a similar function to holding certain keys on a keyboard down while it boots to reset the device's configuration while it is running the OS from Nortel. BTW, this has been discussed awhile ago on the FAQ's: http://faq.pfsense.org/index.php?action=artikel&cat=2&id=27&artlang=en&highlight=contivity Also, if you look around online there's a thread somewhere if you lookup the motherboard model you'll find some more information that has come across over the years. My only gripe with the series is that there is no real mention between the different models.....ie the "contivity 100" has been around for over 10 years with many different hardware configurations but yet they still keep the same model number....the only key for use with pfsense is any of the original "Bay Networks" variants are too old for use as they had a soldered on AMD 486 series CPU. I haven't seen any 1st generation Nortel branded ones but from what I have seen the hardware seems to work pretty well for at home or in a small office....in a larger setup the CPU tends to be the limiting factor when you want to setup site-to-site VPN links. Your best bet for bios flashing would be to extract the current bios and see what features are disabled on the current bios and then attempt to reload it later.

YEAH i get it to work: Mini HowTo which works on the WRAP System with Microdrive and Package Mode: 1.) Install the Live-CD 1.0.1 on the Microdrive ! Use the Format Tool and Partion Mode. 2.) DO NOT USE THE Bootloader on the Microdrive ! 3.) After Installation reboot… 4.) Get the Image from the Embedded Mode on an USB Stick or other medium 5.) Boot the live cd again, use the Shell number 8 or something.. 6.) Mount the Microdrive (/dev/ad4s1a) in my Examble to /tmp/ata 7.) Mount the Image : gunzip pfSense-Embedded.img.gz mdconfig -a -t vnode -f pfSense-Embedded.img mkdir /tmp/mnt/embedded mount /dev/md8a /tmp/mnt/embedded 8.) Delete the old Boot on the microdrive (/tmp/ata/boot) If you can't delete all move the /tmp/ata/boot to boot.old.. 9.)Copy the hole Boot to the microdrive (cp -R /tmp/mnt/embedded/boot to /tmp/ata/) 10.) copy the files from etc to the microdrive cp /tmp/mnt/embedded/etc/ttys /tmp/ata/etc/ttys look in the /tmp/ata/etc/platfrom file (It must containt the word pfSense 11.)last change the config.xml in /tmp/ata/cf/conf/config.xml vi /tmp/ata/cf/conf/config.xml search for sis0 change it to the IP you want to use at the beginning. <interfaces><lan><if>sis0</if> <ipaddr>10.106.0.1</ipaddr> <subnet>24</subnet> 12.) type sync 13) type sync shutdown -h now Remove microdrive but into Wrap boot and now you can configure the other thinks over web gui (http://10.106.0.1) in my Example .... HAVE FUN... Mfg PsYcHo012</lan></interfaces>

OK, tried to locate a default config.xml with hidden features from the FAQs link. The link in there (http://pfsense.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/pfSense/conf.default/config.xml?rev=1.19;content-type=text%2Fplain) is broken and I am not smart enough to locate it on my own.  :-\ From searching the forum I read that there were RRD issues in the recent past. Have they been solved so far? Most posts were affecting a pingable ISPs WAN gateway and not using the extra XML flag. I have found hints on <use_rrd_gateway>and inserted it as follows: @config.xml: <pfsense><version>2.8</version> <lastchange><theme>corporate</theme> <system><use_rrd_gateway>217.5.100.222</use_rrd_gateway> <optimization>normal</optimization> …</system></lastchange></pfsense> but still my WAN quality RRD graph shows 100% packet loss. This might be due to the fact that -even after a couple of changes & reboots- the shell script updaterrd.sh still references my not pingable ISP's WAN gateway which is set dynamically by PPPoE on each connect: @updaterrd.sh: … get_quality_stats_wan () { packetloss_wan=100 roundtrip_wan=0 local out_wan out_wan=ping -c 5 -q 217.5.98.186 if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then … Any ideas on why <use_rrd_gateway>217.5.100.222</use_rrd_gateway> is not used? Before experimenting with the config.xml I upgraded to: pfSense-Full-Update-1.0.1-SNAPSHOT-02-09-2007.tgz Thanks for your input (and this great software, of course!)</use_rrd_gateway>

The linitx is a very nice platform (I have 2 in service at customerlocations) and powerful enough to produce high LAN to LAN throughput. It's also powerful enough to handle much more than the required 5 mbit/s. Once pfSense fully supports the via padlock technology that the in this device used cpu offers vpn encryption will be done "on the fly" without causing much processorload. I rather would go a linitx fx5620.

Atheros chipsets should usually work.

You should do some real life benches on this box. Hard to say what it will push. Not only the throughput but also pps rate will decide how much this system will be able to push. However as you are using some good nics and a good pci bus you should see quite some throughput on auch a box I think.

And those are not supported anyway as they only have 64 mb RAM.

Either.

You could always try puting the NIC in a windows box, downloading the setup utilities, and hard setting the uplink settings in firmware.

If your cards lights are cycling every 2-3 seconds that seems to me like either the bus is resetting the card, or the card itself is resetting. You might try manually assigning different IRQ's to the card and insuring that the PCI slot you are using is not shared by anything else like a COM IO chip or Sound chip or the like. Most desktop grade boards share 3/4 of their PCI slots with on board hardware. Dual/Quad nic's DO NOT LIKE this at all. If you notice, most DUAL/QUAD nic's will not run on PCI splitters installed on single PCI 1U servers. They have warnings in the manual about this. So if the PCI slot you have the card in is split with anything else, this may be leading to the behavior you're experiencing. I would turn off everything in the bios that's not completely necessary including com ports, parallel etc, freeing up IRQ's. Then make sure your card gets IRQ's that are not used by anything else. Also avoid IRQ 11/12 if you can. 12 being the PS2 port. Older boards favored IRQ 10 for the video card. IRQ3,4,5,7.9 should be free if you turn everything off.