Just a follow up, I now run pfsense in a VM with the aforementioned hardware. I'm only giving it 2 gig of ram and 2 cores, generally speaking it doesn't use more than 60% of the memory, and (assuming memory compression in the VM), it's only using 254 meg overall in the ESXI dashboard.

Yes, exactly. What scenario are you trying to prevent here? Steve

Thanks, all. Those were pretty much the answers I was expecting. Time to browse some ubiquiti hardware.

Very old thread, but i have it now finally connected :) (msi version with celeron 847) It does my 500/500 line at 35% cpu when dowloading from usenet. Have pfblocker and nat running. Trying to get snort working. No idea if it still works when i add snort and other services, bought when the line was 100/100 but it seems to do fine. Snort active and CPU on 76% with line rate download..

If it must be external but you want to hug up the Sierra Wireless card anyway you could try out one of those adapter here shown under the link. miniPCIe to USB adapter

@riahc3: Just in case I get asked, Im looking for a cheap PC compatible with pfSense that has a full PCI-E slot as I already have a network card for pfSense. Could be something for you together with a cheap 1U rackmount case

Sometimes, at the some board in the BIOS must be first enabled to the or on the PCIe slot - PCIe x1 to get the card full recognized.

asrock matx with a braswell chip  _> http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N3700M/ or http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N3150M/ (more expandability than itx) 8gb ddr3L a single or dual port intel nic from ebay (single if you want to use the onboard asrock one, dual if you do not) a small hd or ssd (spare is fine) generic case with low power psu you can hyper-v or exsi on it, and add a sata card for a xpenology vm,etc as well

The Dell versions don't any special firmware on them, so no worries there. They seem to support LAGG and the traffic shaper as well. I haven't thrown them onto the network I have that is capable of pushing 20Gbps through the LAGG, but I'll report back when I do.

Just an update to this build… When I was using it for PF it was kicking ass and taking names lol but I have moved to VmWare ESXi an now i'm running PF in a VM... Thanks for all the info guys.  ;)

@madoon Forget about pfSense for a while and test your modem on your PC. I suggest to use MDMA. Make sure your modem is registering on the network and you see what you expect in RAT (3G/LTE/etc). If everything is good - plug the modem back to the router and observe the logs. 1. kernel log - make sure the modem is detected and port created 2. ppp log - just check if there is a dialout attempt, note the errors (if any)

I've built my new pFsense box, using the Jetway JBC200F9N-E4IN-B (5 port Intel). It was an easy build, as you only had to install RAM and hard drive/SSD. I'm not sure how to run network tests, but for my 300/20 connection, it is fine without any problems. https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=97384.0

USB Ethernet or 1 slot PCI Ethernet, Onboard Ethernet. USB 3.0 Boost - faster USB 3.0-transport with UASP in Windows 8 Can you perhaps set this feature off in the BIOS? Network iControl - network throughput control in real time Also this feature should be perhaps disabled in the BIOS and causes the errors.

Sorry for the delay. Yes, that's what I was referring to. Odd I havne't seen that then. I'm not aware of any regressions in the ath driver though 2.0 is really quite old now! It might be worth trying 2.1.5 if you can. Steve

Hello again NickM, I am sorry to bug you once more again, related to my really bad english language skills I am a bit disorientated now! Did you solve out the problem and installed it on the SSD? Or was  you not able to install it on the SSD? Thanks for the advice, but all i had to do is change it from AHCI to IDE and it worked. Till this text I was thinking it was running fine and you got installed it on the SSD. For some reason with AHCI enabled after i would finish installing and remove the stick while selecting to boot from SSD it would not. And now I am thinking it was not running for you to install it on the SSD. Can you please give me a hint to do also so likes you?

That's generally the sign of a driver issue, where an ifconfig down && up resolves things for some period of time. Reporting to freebsd-net list with specifics, or filing a FreeBSD PR after replicating with stock 11-CURRENT assuming it's replicable there, would be your best bet. Where it doesn't impact hardware we sell, we don't get much into driver issues.

There is also this page for future reference: http://netgate.com/docs/rcc-ve-4860/pfsense.html

@BlueKobold: But 1 is used for WAN connection so only 1 is available for LAN and If I understand correctly this would mean that packages arriving to and departing from the router need to go over the same port thus causing a speed hit.?.. But you are free to buy a smaller or greater network switch that is capable to handle VLANs! I have a TP-Link TL-SG2424 for future purposes :) low power usage For sure this would be here in Germany a big plus, because the price of electricity is gaining more then 30% of the actual price we have now! 30% is a very steep increase! In Belgium they're planning on increasing taxes on electricity from 6% to 21% which is already a costly affair.. Anyway, thanks a lot for your time and help! I ordered the SG-2440 last Sunday from the pfSense Store and it should arrive just before the weekend :) I guess I'll know what to do this weekend :)