Do you have any longer term advice regarding this GPON SFP setup? I figured you would know if it will work by now? :) Do you have a link or source for the SFP itself? I was thinking of using the SFP module directly into my Foundry/Brocade 1GB SFP port to make the termination, and the just pull the address on the WAN port of the PFSense (1U SuperMicro C2758) from within a single VLAN. I only have 1 PCIe slot and its got a nice 10GB SFP+ card init I'd like to keep if I can help it. Did you have issue otherwise? I think our 1GB service use PPPoE, but I can configure that easily in PFSense if the SPF does the rest. Bryan

I wanted to come back and close the loop on this after talking to Supermicro a couple days ago. First of all, the rep was telling me that if a motherboard and a chassis were meant to be compatible it would say so on the right hand side of the web page, and neither this board nor chassis mention compatibility with the other one.  I understood this general rule of course, but I pressed him about the I/O shield accessory for this chassis that specifically calls out the model family for my Atom board.  In the end he agreed that the board must work in this chassis as long as I buy that shield, even if it doesn't say so on the website.  Really no better answer than the assumption I'd already made, but I took it and moved on. On the power supply question, we went round and round and he put me on hold twice to go ask someone else about it.  I could tell I'd finally gotten through to him after I explained why I felt there might be a "missing piece" to convert from the 12V DC barrel jack to the 4-pin ATX plug on my motherboard.  Rightly or wrongly, I explained to him that I assumed his chassis takes the 12V barrel plug and converts it to an 8-pin ATX connector for his Xeon-D motherboard.  That may not be correct, and he wasn't sure either, but the point was, I'd need an adapter from 8-pin to 4-pin in that scenario to plug into my Atom board.  Since that adapter surely didn't come with the I/O shield, how would I get it?  This was when he put me on hold the second time, and when he came back he was confident he had the answer.  What he said is that when you buy the power supply accessory kit (84W?), it comes with the adapters you need to convert from the barrel jack input to the different ATX connectors.  I didn't really want to buy their power supply, but at least this seems to answer the question. For the final question I ended up not asking Supermicro, both because I'd been on the phone with them for over 45 minutes by this point, and because I believe I found the answer in another person's SuperServer build thread.  What it looks like is that the chassis and super server come with the physical bracket to mount an expansion card, but not the riser card you need to make the electrical connection. So with all of that information, it does seem like you could buy the E300 chassis and use it with an Atom motherboard, as long as you buy the optional I/O shield and buy the optional PSU kit (or else rig up your own with adapters from Amazon).  If you want to use the expansion slot, you'll either need to buy the right Supermicro riser card, or you might be able to get by with a generic flexible one from Amazon, and just use the included bracket to hold the card. I ended up deciding that the odds of me upgrading with a 10GbE NIC down the road are pretty slim, and bought a trusty m350 chassis with a few fans, extra HD bracket and power kit.  I still like the idea of the Supermicro chassis, but at this time it's just a little pricey and harder to get all the special pieces together to make it work with Atom.

Hi - thx for the reply. There are a few reasons I feel it is missing a fan, one was not shipped with it I want to understand my options if the need ever exists to upgrade/expand the appliance I will be prepared instead of trying to figure it out later I like to tinker @jahonix: @dwfa: There are no instructions with it for the hardware Why do you want to tinker with the device? It should work flawlessly as delivered. I'm trying to understand your motivation for it.

@P3R: @Taiidan: You could have spent only $60 for your mobo/cpu and had way better features including pci-e slots and ECC RAM had you went with an AM1 platform. PCIe is a useless feature for cenal (and many others) as there is no room to use it in the case he choose, and already that small sized case was hard for his girlfriend to accept he said. Cenal didn't ask for buying advice or criticism in this thread. He was kind enough to share his build and experience with the forum and for that all he gets are negative smarta*ses criticising the choices he already made.  >:( Create your own thread with a detailed recipe for your superior platform and share how that perform instead. That would at least be constructive and add value to the community instead of this s*it. Several tests/benchmarks all over the net state that although some am1 boards accept ECC ram, they dont use it as such.

That makes it the SG-300 or a consumer item from Netgear, TP-Link, TrendNET or similar. The perhaps you go better with the SG300, it is ways better then the others. Another switch what can be nice to hit this case here is the D-Link DGS1510-20, also Layer3 with 20 GB Ports but on top of this sorted with 2 SFP+ Ports! You can now chose to connect over a 10 GbE interface to your server and then you will be having a gain on throughput.

At eBay available for ~80 Euros Alix 2D13

realtek were problematic for me using FreeBSD 9.3 on intel haswell generation hardware. I found with offloading enabled tcp would misbehave, speed's did not ramp up properly etc.  It was fine with offloading disabled. Otherwise it will work but wont handle as high workloads as intel cards, this is not necessarily due to the hardware but simply the drivers lacking multiple features that help the intel cards, one of the most important been interrupt moderation. I cannot say if things have improved with FreeBSD 10 and 11, as I added a intel card to the realtek machine and all my other server's use intel already.

@BlueKobold: You are mixing here some information´s I think, the J1900 comes without AES-NI and this is actual only speeding up IPsec so if you are using IPsec it should be better there as an option, or if later OpenVPN 2.4 is joining into pfSense perhaps it might be also speeding up the OpenVPN part. I don't understand why you keep saying this: the current version of OpenVPN does use AES-NI and does run faster on CPUs with AES-NI. OpenVPN 2.4 enables AES GCM mode, which is even faster with AES-NI, but the current AES CBC mode does already use AES-NI via OpenSSL.

Sounds silly but I actually carry one of these around with me https://www.scan.co.uk/products/8-port-tp-link-tl-sg108e-gigabit-easysmart-network-switch-10-100-1000mbps-managed-for-small-medium-b so I can stick port mirroring to sniff problem links with wireshark on my laptop; works reasonably well and does all the L2 functions such as tagging I will disclaim that I've never tried to leave it in situ as a primary access switch but at the same time it's never given me any trouble.

The CM600 is a pure modem without any routing capabilities you may use it without any SPI/NAT and your home network will be directly connected to the Internet, so there should be a device that is doing SPI/NAT. What is the correct Internet connection speed your ISP is serving you?  If you connect a pfSense box and a small LAN Switch either Layer2 or Layer3 such the Cisco SG (200 or 300) series is offering at the market. So you could set up or route VLANs with or without the usage of the pfSense box like you need it or be able to pay it.

That's exactly how I've done it previously, though not with the re driver. Looks to be loading correctly to me. What was the reason for doing that? Steve

These things are perfect for our redundant T1 lines. Check sig.

thanks. i want to Run Squid on this. Then I would go with a mSATA or the M.2 solution.

The cpu supports AES-NI  ;D, i can get an SSD drive If we talk about this CPU here (Intel CPU Core i5-650 BOX 3,2GHz S.1156 4MB Clarkdale) it would be stronger then the smaller 4 core cpu or SoC in the APU2C4. The SSD could be a real gain for pfSense! and from what i can see the NIC is listed on the bay as the following but the seller states its only for an IBM server?? Don´t buy it please, there where in the past some models needed to be flashed with another BIOS or Firmware file and this was able to realize at all models so if you are the lucky one it can be a cheap shot, but if not, you gets only your hands on something that can not be really used under pfSense! So a refurbished Intel Pro/1000 PT Dual or Quad Port NIC is able to get from ebay.com in the USA for something around ~$50 and a used cool server pulled Intel i350-T4 will be at ~$120. But this are then cards you will be happy with and they do what you need and want from them! 45W1959 IBM OEM Intel PRO 1000 PT Quad Port PCIE GIGABIT Ethernet Server NIC Intel Pro/1000 PT Dual or Quad Port NIC! Please trust my words! Intel PT NICs on eBay.com They are often not more expensive then ~$40 - $50 but working like a charm under pfSense. Intel i350-T4 starting at ~$55 and really nice! If I was to add these parts would it perform better than say an APU2C4? If you get no  BIOS Problem it would be really more strong and powerful then the APU2C4 Board for sure! I only ask, as once i purchase these additonal parts its already added to 50% of the price of an APU2C4? Be cool, with 8 GB and a 3,2GHz CPU there is nothing that you might be not realizing under pfSense, all is running for you! Here are two other boards that will be also nice matching to your criteria: Jetway NF952-Q170 best ASUS Q87T budget With this you will be getting mSATA Support and a free slot for a miniPCIe WiFI card, many Intel GB LAN Ports on Board or a real PCI 3.0 x4 Slot for good and strong NICs. Both will be holding also between 8 GB and 16 GB and you will be also sized to mini-ITX.

Yeah what's up with you running public IP space behind private IP space?  I've never seen that before for a normal ISP connection.

How many watts does your am1 draw?

That value coems from the same place if the coretemp driver is in use. I would suggest that there may have been some BIOS change. Perhaps the BIOS battery has gone flat on that one system and it's gone back to default settings? It's hard to explain what the difference might be but you should see the coretemp driver attaching to the hardware in the boot log. Check for differences between the systems in the log. Steve

Dell PowerEdge R210 II Rack 1U Server Intel Xeon E3-1230 16GB  for $300. Plus a SSD, perhaps plus an Intel i340-T4 or i350-t4 or perhaps an Intel Pro/1000 PT quad port NIC and all will be fine for you to run a big and strong pfSense appliance.

@IggyB: @messerchmidt: keep the ci323 for your pfsense and build a proper bare metal freenas box with ecc ram - xeon d and atom with ecc are fine, if not overkill, for those thanks for suggestion, sounds like the right step. i want to give ci323 another chance, i would like to try realtek's driver from their website and have started a new threat asking how to do it. ci323 is giving me random "stalls" on network. not sure if it's package related or driver that comes with freebsd/pfsense http://mobiletiger.jorba.de/vmware-esxi-6-0-n3150-itx-intel-celeron-braswell-platform-problem-solved/    <-vmware on the ci323