Hardware choices notwithstanding, I would like to comment on your IP scheme.  To me it doesn't make much sense to have 192.168.1,10,30,50 in one location and 192.168.20,40,60 in the other. It would make more sense to have 192.168.1,10,30,50 in one location and 192.168.70,80,90 in another.  That way you could cover all subnets in the other location from both sides with one route (in OpenVPN, IPsec phase 2, etc.) Site 1 could reach everything at site 2 with 192.168.64.0/18 and site 2 could reach everything at site 1 with 192.168.0.0/18 Just a thought.

Did an auto detect on all three and they are all working now.

Thanks for the reply. Have spoke to ISP and they are going to come back to me on the ability to run another cable from the spare port on the Cisco. I will purchase a small switch to connect WAN and 2 x PF boxes to….only issue I suppose is another single point of failure in the switch but hey ho that is easier replaced than my esxi boxes. Thanks

I understand.  Hope you get to test that soon.  Glad your machine is working well.

@NKRA: Hi, Hope that I can ask this off topic question.  Does anyone know what is the lead time to get the Lanner Unit from the manufacturer?  Thanks. I can't speak to that one in particular, but most of the parts I've ordered from Lanner get to me within a week if they're in stock or 2-3 weeks if they ship from overseas (my parts always seem to go to their Canadian office first, then they ship to me).

6GB of RAM is plenty of memory, so it's definitely not a question of memory shortage. I'm guessing that your 6GB is configured as 2x2GB+2x1GB (therefore you have 4 modules, 2 of 2GB and 2 of 1GB). If that's the case please make sure that the memory modules of the same capacity are exactly identical (make, model timing, etc) and the 2GB and 1GB modules have the exact same timing. In doubt, drop the 1GB modules and reduce the memory to 4GB (2x2GB) and see what happens. (you need to run it for a while to see if the failure still happens) Now, you said very little about your machine, how old the hardware is, is this a new install, has it worked better before and this started to happen suddenly without you changing anything, etc. I'm focusing on the RAM but it could actually be a number of other hardware things. Halea

A quick search on that number suggests that's the kit for the XTM5/8 series. It looks like WG8531 is the kit for the X-e series boxes. If you need to get hold of some though (and ebay is not forthcoming) maybe ask this guy: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=20095.msg448174#msg448174 Steve

@haleakalas: What I find very odd is that you used two different IDE drives in this computer and you were able to install pfsense on both of them initially. But each one of them failed as soon as you finished your pfsense install and rebooted. Is my understanding correct? If that's the case, I am wondering if you don't have something else going on which wreaks havoc in your system. And chances are that if you take a third IDE drive and do the same things you'll get the same result. Yes. That is exactly correct. I had considered using a USB drive. I do belive the BIOS supports USB booting, and if I unplug the HD then it should work no problem.

Ok, so a quick test shows it's almost as I expected. The config file appears in /var/etc as mpd_opt7.conf. OPT7 happens to be the interface I assigned it to. It must be assigned and enabled before the file is generated. Inside the file are any changes to the defaults defined in the ppp config including the dialing prefix, which is set by default as 'DT'. However I'm not sure that's possible to alter via the webgui, the modem init string is a different variable. Steve

I just looked through CDW and I didn't see any consumer-grade cards that take an SFP. Nothing without spending hundreds of dollars.  Better to get a nice managed switch and a Mini GBIC.

Agree with stephenw10 on Rangeley processor. I am satisfied with mine even if my use is as hobbist.

@cc2iscool: I wonder how the C2350 compares to the D2550 Like chalk and cheese.  ;) They may both be labelled Atom but these are very different processors. The C2350 is significantly faster. Steve

I apologize, I thought I was suppose to change it after the next prompt. Thanks.

Steve, In my case it's been a dynamic IP issue. I went back to using it with a dynamic IP for testing again. On the WAN side everything gets going flawlessly and works for a variable amount of time. In one case it was as short as 3-4 minutes, in the best case it worked fine for almost 2 hours. Then suddenly no access to the Internet as the WAN IP is lost. pfSense seems to work fine otherwise, as LAN to LAN routing, etc. are all ok. When the failure happens there is very little information in the logs, almost none! Neither from the webGUI nor from the console one can renew the WAN IP (the function just hangs), it requires a complete restart of pfSense (either from the WebGUI or from the console). On FreeBSD 8.x and 9.x the same thing happens. (Dynamic IP, normal DHCP client config) Except for the fact that everything seems to work a little longer before failure. While testing FreeBSD I tried 3 different DHCP servers (linux based, windows based and from a commercial router) Same outcome! But when the interface is set to use a static IP all the problems go away and the adapter works flawlessly. I can actually drive it almost full speed (>90 megabit per second) It doesn't drop a single packet for days at a time. (Remember I've been using this thing for many months now on the LAN side of my pfSense router) Everything above is pretty much what I mentioned in earlier posts. The only new input is that I also tested (this time really thoroughly) this adapter on Windows (XP, Vista, Server 2003 and 7) and Debian Linux (and its derivatives like Ubuntu and LinuxMint). This adapter works so well that it would put to shame all those who have been badmouthing USB/Ethernet adapters for so long on these forums. Halea

Thanks for the feedback. I ordered one, we'll see how well it works for us. Halea

Hi blinkenlights, Sorry for my late reply, but I was away for a week. Thank you for your time and complete reply. I decided to go for this UPS: https://www.apc.com/products/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BR550GI It's line-interactive topology, has USB and it will support my equipment long enough to overcome any power problems. The price tag is also within my budget. If anyone is using this UPS device, can you share how is apcupsd behaving with this device? Which software package will be more stable for this device: apcupsd or NUT package? I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys! Regards, Nick

I didn't even see the last one with 6xGbE ports.  Same picture for both.  Duh.  Thanks.

not a ton, at least, not the way I test things (very small packets).

@robi: You should try NAS3Free (http://www.nas4free.org/)… Since Samba version 4 is only available as alpha release from NAS4Free, it is probably not the best implementation for evaluating the version 4 capabilities. And again, running sensitive things like a dc and/or storage on a firewall (no matter how hardened it is) is a bad idea if security is a consideration.

@Mateh: But yeah. You could happily use 2.2, on board LAN and a USB 3.0 Ethernet adapter. Bear in mind that 2.2 is currently BETA. Not for long. Also: http://store.netgate.com/Production-Boards-C209.aspx