@Jason : I have a quotation from fit-pc.com for an Intense PC 2 + FM-4LAN module. They don't require me to buy extra stuff… @Nadrek : Thank you very much for the feedback ! I hope the FACE module is the same between FIT-PC3 and Intense PC 2. Can you confirm you have 4 X Intel 82574L network interfaces ?

Higher end NICs, like the i350, support having "virtual hardware" NICs. The i350 supports up to 8 virtual NICs per port, each with their own frame size, VLANS, and interrupts. They work exactly like separate physical NICs and report to the host as desperate NICs. In this case, you can use the VT-D, or whatever, and pass through the "hardware" virtual NIC directly to the guest and get rid of the overhead of passing it through the host. Because guests are not really aware of each other, the i350 specifically, has an internal switch, and can switch traffic between these virtual NICs without having them go out to the switch and it does this at the full PCIe 2.1x4 speed(2GB/s full-duplex).

@stephenw10: Interesting. CPU usage across 8 cores may be somewhat non-linear perhaps, harder to extrapolate. They do have that data labelled as 'preliminary' so perhaps so test refinements are still to come. Steve I was talking per core.

@ouldsmobile: Cool, which VM software would this kind of setup work with, or what is the recommended software to use. I only have experience using virtualbox. I have never tried any of the vmware products yet. Thanks again. Kevin I'm not the right person to ask as I only use vSphere and I'm guessing you don't want to reinstall your existing system and make file services virtualized as well.  You should hit up this section of the site for help: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?board=37.0

http://drivers.portwell.com/CA_Manual/NAR-5500/NAR-5500%20Manual%20v1.2.pdf Would this link be helpful?  It talks about the LCD screen.

@acharge: Woaw, thanks for you reply !! Atom 8 cores are awesome ! I will check that. Do you know a very cool embedded board with this processor ? Have a nice day A. C2758 - http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SRi-2758F.cfm C2750 - http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SAi-2750F.cfm

Series 7 chipsets were the last ones that came together with 8257x controllers. Series 8 will almost always be built with a i21x ethernet controller due to intel bundling them together for a discount. Some of these discounts are probably pretty big, its the only way I can explain certain motherboards with onboard 10GbE being as cheap as they are. (~$400 for brand new X540 dual port, ~$500 if you want a LGA2011 board and SAS HBA glued to it) There might be hard to find exceptions (don't know any off top of my head) and likely cost more than just getting a separate card. So unless your case cannot fit a card, there is your solution :) That is also assuming they don't go the typical ultra-cheap route and just use a realjunk controller instead.

The base OS on pfSense 2.1.x is FreeBSD 8.3, whereas on 2.0.x it was FreeBSD 8.1. So the drivers are likely to be newer and perhaps behave better, but without digging through FreeBSD's source to compare between those versions it's tough to say exactly what if anything changed in the driver. pfSense 2.2 is based on FreeBSD 10.x and is even more likely to work well on that hardware, but it's still some distance from release or production quality yet. You're better off spending a few more bucks on known-good hardware (e.g. Intel NICs) than trying to hope an off-brand works well.

pfSense doesn't support by-pass ports directly and usually you would not ever want that feature on a firewall. The issue would be that the bypass feature must be capable of being disabled either by jumpers or in the bios otherwise it will quickly bypass the ports after the watchdog timer expires (30s perhaps). An alternative would be to write your own code which keeps the watchdog happy but that would be a last resort. Steve

https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=PPPoE+server https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?board=28.0

and if you want some actual cable length, I have bought these (using one now on an Alix 2D13 serial): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000067SCH/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've never seen a USB-to-RS232 adapter which is configured for null modem use.  Get an adapter.

If you don't actually want to use a transparent setup you can hide it from a tracert by using policy routing.  I consider it a bug.  Others a feature. https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/932

Got a Kill-A-Watt and measured idle power draw of several different types of hardware for general comparison. Looks like I need to replace my current setup before I spend too much on additional electricity usage. Initial setup Case: eMachines micro-ATX mini tower Motherboard: Supermicro PDSBM-LN2+ CPU: Intel Xeon 3060 PSU: Enermax EG465P-VE 460W Disk: Western Digital 80GB HDD NICs: Dual onboard Intel 82573L WAN/LAN, Intel Pro/100 PCI for WiFi AP Current setup same as initial except PSU: Antec VP450 450W Test setup 1 same as initial except Case: ABMX rackmount 1U PSU: Ablecom 520W 1U NICs: Intel Pro/1000 MT PCI-X in PCI slot Test setup 2 Case: generic ATX tower Motherboard: Supermicro C2SEA CPU: Intel Q8300 PSU: Antec Neopower 650 Blue 650W Disk: Seagate 7200.12 500GB HDD NICs: Onboard Realtek RTL8111C for LAN1, Intel Pro/1000 PT x2 for WAN1/WAN2, Intel Pro/1000 CT for LAN2 Idle power draw Initial setup: 70W Current setup: 61W Test setup 1: 69W Test setup 2: 54W and just for grins Dell Optiplex 980/i3-530/pfsense: 36W Dell Optiplex 980/i3-530/Win7: 34W HP 8200 Elite/i5-2500/Win7: 24W HP 8200 Elite SFF/i5-2400/Win7: 25W

@deagle: Is the embedded NIC Intel from the SoC? According to Intel, ATOM E3815/E3825 do not include integrated LAN. Probably a Realtek (if I may guess).

Bandwidth requirements?  Running squid & squidguard on a D525 Atom might not be a great idea depending on what kind of connection you've got.

I don't know the original make/model as it was a system pull from an Acer Aspire One, but this card works fine: ath0: <atheros 2424="" 5424=""> mem 0xfea00000-0xfea0ffff at device 0.0 on pci4 ath0: [ITHREAD] ath0: AR2425 mac 14.2 RF5424 phy 7.0</atheros>

I've got the C2758 variant.  Works great under 2.1.1 now that the upgraded Intel drivers are back in the build.  The only warning I'll give is that you'll have a grand total of (2) working USB ports.  Most of the ports on this board are 3.0 and that doesn't work yet.

You may add a /boot/loader.conf.local file by touch command for addational config settings. Then just edit it and add the line "legal.intel_ipw.license_ack=1". Then the error massages will be gone.