@atamido:

Do you plan on converting the existing power supply to fanless, or are you going to purchase a new fanless power supply?

I may have to replace the power supply with a fanless model.  The entire PC doesn't need alot of power to run so I can probably get away with a small factor 100 watt PS unit once I change the hard drive to a CF or laptop hard drive and no fans.  I'd very happy if the entire thing runs under 20 watts but not likely due to the PIII.  Lucky it's not a P4, power hungry little beast.

Darkk

Thanks for the information! The article re SonicWall is crazy. I love open source :-)

Having received no feedback, I went on and bought the motherboard anyway. The good news is that the onboard Ethernet is recognized and there seem to be no other problems. I haven't tried to really use it yet, though.

@Cry:

Suggestion: Use the search function ;)

Recommendations for choice of NIC have been made many times.  Intel Server grade cards are amongst the most recommended ISTR.

Sure I have already read some posts about intel. I want just to be sure that intel and dell 830/840 are compatible.

Thanks for your interest!

Well, I have found a decent workaround for now.

adding:

<shellcmd>ifconfig sis1 media 10baseT/UTP mediaopt full-duplex</shellcmd>

to the system area of my config.xml seems to have done the trick.

Thank you guys for all your answers!
Unfortunately we have come to the conclusion that pfSense is not mature enough for enterprise use in our company. I'm not saying it can't be used that way, but make it running on new enterprise hardware seems to be bothersome. Together with some other small, and less small issues, we decided to switch back to a hardware firewall; a cheaper and in our eyes more reliable solution which is less risky.
Maybe we get back on this decision some day, but for now it seems the best choice.

If you purchase a short-depth 1u server, you could always mount one on the front and one on the back of the rack.

Hmrf,

I gave pfSense 1.2.1 RC2 a shot.
My Intel Pro Gt 1000 was detected just fine as an em0 device, but the internal VIA gigabit nic was detected but NOT enabled:

vge0: <via networking="" gigabit="" ethernet="">port 0xf800-0xf8ff mem 0xfdffe000-0xfdffe0ff irq 18 at device 14.0 on pci0
vge0: MII read timed out
vge0: failed to start MII autopoll
vge0: MII without any phy!
device_attach: vge0 attach returned 6

So, what to do next?

PS: Filled a ticket: http://cvstrac.pfsense.org/tktview?tn=1834</via>

As you're running squid I would really push you to stay away from any CF full installation as the continuous writing/rewriting of the cache will fry a CF in no time (at least according to many other posts here).  Glad you've chosen SSD over CF.

I installed the 1.2.1 version and the network card works correctly! thanks to all

Thanks for the info.  The price was way too low.

GP

Well it has no problems dealing with the 16 MBit/s Line…
I have not a lot of rules but it fits perfectly for home use if not
also for a small office ;-)

Thanks.

You make no mention of what CPU you're planning on using, or how much memory, or what you're planning on doing on your network.

If you'll be doing little more than email and web browsing and want a firewall, just about anything will cope with your bandwidth.  If you're going to be running lots of packages, making heaving use of torrents, VOIP and gaming then you'll need something with a higher spec.

The links that Perry provided contain lots of useful information.  Read and make up your own mind.

Thanks for the link.
RC