The Hardware Compatibility List can be found here, from the front page of the pfSense web site.  It looks like the NFE driver may support the RTL8211B chipset.

Your other solution would be to get a mini-itx board with a 4x PCI-e slot and a dual port Intel Server grade NIC.  That should allow you to "make do" with a lower spec CPU, possibly an Atom based board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820141419

Been up for several months now…

If It would help the switch I'm getting is this one.
Cisco Small Business SGE2000P
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124213

Seeing how It does support 802.3ad It should then support Link aggregation (Or bonding ;))

I like the 5501 for the head office, but an Alix box might be a better fit for the branch offices. It's close to the specs of the 5501 and cheaper than the 4801. http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm
There are some rough numbers in this post- http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,14581.0.html
Not scientific, but they give you an idea how the crypto cards help. The Geode boards (5501 and Alix) have a built-in crypto chip. As detailed in the referenced post, the driver got incorporated into 1.2.3 builds, but actually didn't help at all and rendered a hifn card useless to boot. I noted this in a support ticket and suggested making glxsb a module instead of in the kernel. I never heard back, and haven't tested recent snapshots. The glxsb driver may be working in the 7.2 based builds. I would suggest you do some tests before deploying. If you need higher IPSec throughput, you may want to stick with 1.2.2 and a hifn.

In order I'd look at:

PSU

Cooling (CPU and case)

Motherboard

CPU

Race condition?

so you got your SGS 1660 from the same ebay seller i did.. hes a awesome guy…

i was the original buyer of the first one that had PFSense loaded on it.. i have a
total of 4 of the boxes... i asked him if he could try pfsense and send me the dmesg
of it.

note:
there are extra headers on the motherboard for the ps/2 keyboard and mouse
as well as the VGA header to connect to a monitor as well.

the chipset  max's out at 2G.. i got 1G in my box 2x1G dimms works great in this box.

i have the docs here on motherboard info.

my box's have been ROCK solid.

Thanks for the update. Having (briefly) looked at the hardware profiles of the different Huawei HSDPA modems, it looks like most of them are reporting the same hardware ID and profiles. So, my guess is that if it works with the 220, since the 220 seems to be somewhat of a "reference" platform for Huawei, it will work with other modem models too. I've successfully gotten the E181 (T-Mobile webConnect) to work on both Linux and Mac.

Do not play. Just set up the port on the switch to auto-negotiate. This is the only correct setting unless you want to set up speed/duplex on pfSense.

Maybe you're right ;)

I hadn't heard of a lot of problems with the Marvell NICs and I've used them myself without issue, so I assumed the problem was the Realteks

Maybe OP does need to replace them all.

if used dc from an users that i always get full speed from and the poor speeds is only when i use pfsense. i also tried torrents the same results but just in cause thats it my network cards or the P4 computer i was away to get a replacement and athlon xp 3200+ 1.5gig ram that i will try tonight

Thank you all for your kind replies. A friend took me to that site too :D
I have constructed a keyboard cable (which I think is pretty nifty as it can be removed easily)
and inserted my trusty old voodoo 3 PCI VGA into the pci slot.

PF installed like a DREAM! But… now my only problem is the bios won't hold itself.
Ive replaced the battery and ensured the jumper is not on clear so im a bit stumped  ???

after this im all done  ;D

Will post some pics later :)

edit: you know what? maybe re-flashing the bios (with nice new update -cheers dot-) may solve the problem, what do you think?

Oh…I thought you were referring to the wireless one...Thanks for crushing my hopes and dreams Cry Havok.... :'(

;D

It was only starting point.  I am using a quad-phemon with 6 GB of ram.  I have 5 or 6 ethernet cards in it and run it under virtualization.  I have a compaq dl 380 with 2 1.00 processors and 2 GB.  It runs pfsense great.

RC

Questions about a particular package should probably be asked in the Packages forum, with the package name in the title (after you've reviewed existing threads, and read the package's documentation).

The igb driver appears to support 'Adaptive Interrupt Moderation', but in FreeBSD that's only the 82575 and 82576 chips.  If your hardware (82571/82572) supports AIM, as evidently it does since linux & windows do it, maybe it would be possible to modify the igb driver to handle the 82571/82572 chips as well.

Being a FreeBSD newbie, I haven't a clue what that entails, but I imagine it's at least adding PCI ids to igb and removing them from em …

regards, ... Charlie

it worked, wow, i feel so bad now for wasting your time, the help was appreciated.

You can put together a board, case, and PS at Netgate for $161 (Q=10+). That saves $20 off of the kit, you can pick up cf cards cheaper from newegg and such. I've always had good service from them. Shipping would be from TX, so I'm not sure what that would work out to.

Depending on the chipset and BIOS the non-PAE kernel can generally address about 3GB of physical memory. (The remainder of the 4GB physical address space is 'reserved' for addressing CPU registers, PCI device memory address space etc.)

The message about memory above 4GB being ignored should be treated as an informational message rather than an error message. If it troubles people just remove some of the RAM (and possibly reuse it in another system).

Using a PAE kernel will not make any more memory available for kernel data structures such as firewall rules, state tables, routes etc but it will make more memory available to hold applications in memory (possibly reducing swapping and paging). Therefore I suspect that for most pfSense users a PAE kernel would be of no substantial benefit.