@mats thanks for the reply and please forgive the long delay in responding. Thanks for the advice regarding the electrical side. Have a APC UPS powering the cable modem. The coax feeding the cable modem is run thru a surge suppressor . The pfSense box is powered by a separate APC UPS. Anything else I should consider?

Thank you gentlemen. I appreciate your time and feedback.

Good decision!

@stephenw10 around 24 x 10G ports

Ah, interesting. I have seen that with an incompatible SFP module but never with just the connection like that. But yes in that case simply removing the module and rebooting was not sufficient to clear the state in the NIC. It had to be completely powered down to see the correct module again. Steve

Thanks @stephenw10 for the insight, I really appreciate it. I won't waste any more time on this.

I've recently bought an Intel Pro/1000 too to test pfSense on virtual machine (Proxmox)

Ok, you will need to change it's mode. For example: http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1226 It would be better to permanently switch it which might be possible from it's interface in Windows or Mac. Otherwise if you can switch it to device ID 1C05 it should be detected: https://github.com/pfsense/FreeBSD-src/blob/ff7d4801f1b88de656e028209818ff005e8a1353/sys/dev/usb/usbdevs#L2437 Steve

If you boot an image that does not use a serial console by default you won't see anything unless you have the VGA header hooked up. The XTM5 does not have a UEFI bios. It you try to boot an image that requires UEFI it won't boot. Are you trying to boot USB? Do you know the pfSense installed boots USB, you've made the required BIOS changes? Steve

You might have more luck with a Broadcom NIC and patched FreeBSD driver: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r32230041-Internet-Bypassing-the-HH3K-up-to-2-5Gbps-using-a-BCM57810S-NIC I have no way of testing that myself.... Steve

so I fixed this. I plugged the modem into a win box, connected to the serial port then AT+ZCDRUN=E this enters the modem into the download mode disabling the drives altogether. (AT+ZCDRUN=8 did NOT work for me) this is being saved in the nvram. plugged it back in, worked right away ! -- ugen0.2: <ZTE,Incorporated T-Mobile Rocket 4G> at usbus0 u3g0 on uhub0 u3g0: <ZTE,Incorporated T-Mobile Rocket 4G, class 0/0, rev 2.00/0.00, addr 30> on usbus0 u3g0: Found 3 ports.

Thank you both of you for your advices. Actually this server has either broadcom or intel NIC I concluded the study by recommending choosing the one with Intel NIC. I hope there will be no problem during the installation and the configuration.

@stephenw10 100% agree. That is literally the predicament I am in. For now, I VLAN to a PC who has a top of the line CPU in it (overkill really) which would probably do gigabit OpenVPN, but given my internet connection is 100/40, the box above seems like it will be perfect for the cupboard.

look this https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm

That doesn't seem way out. [2.4.5-DEVELOPMENT][root@2220.stevew.lan]/root: sysctl dev.cpu.0.temperature dev.cpu.0.temperature: 57.0C That's at idle pretty much. Steve

Sadly not at least on the 1u version. The only fan was a cpu blower designed to pull from the cpu and motherboard and push the heat out which you can clock down but still noisey. I did buy some 1u silent Gelid fans as supermicro are always generous with connecting fans but still did not work well. The other issue is the very noisy (although labelled as silent) 1u PSU. I've been on the periphery with pfsense for a while now so did not know that "aes-ni must have compatibility" was pushed back. I went out last year and dropped £200 on one of the fanless and silent qotom boxed. ALthough am very happy with it as against running a vm. Cheers

Only thing I found was this: [image: 1549998021994-selection_573.png] But they may have updated it and kept the numbering. Steve

Like an i3-8100t? Then yes. Easily. Steve

I agree with #stephenw10 in that you should confirm the WAN speeds first. Only then can you check if your PfSense can pass that level of traffic. FYI, for reference, I did some testing on ESXi today using a couple of virtual switches inside: Test 1: Windows 7 (4 core 4GB) --> Virtual switch --> Centos 7.5 (4 core 4GB) Iperf3 gives me 13Gbps across the v-switch. (therefore the Iperf client & server Virt-machines have plenty of CPU & RAM. Test 2: Windows 7 (4 core 8GB) --> Virt-SW-1 --> PfSense (4 core 4GB) --> Virt-Sw-2 --> Centos 7.5 (4 core 4GB) Iperf3 now only gives 2.5Gbps E2E through PfSense even with 4 Xeon & 8GB ram assigned to PfSense. Tried this with both E1000 and VMX3 virtual NICs but result is the same. Now I'm wondering what I need to tweak inside PF to get better throughput, or if this is a limitation of PF in ESXi environment ?

@stephenw10 Thank you very much for your help. I will buy it next week and start configure.Very happy with the your answer :).