Hardware Recommendations for 2G Fiber Connection
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I recently upgraded to a symmetrical 2GB optical connection, and my J1900 is getting a bit long in the tooth, so I am considering building a new box for my home. Just 2 users, likely running VPNs - 1 road warrior / one outbound and a very large pfBlocker list. Might also want to add an IPS like Suricata. Any thoughts on any of the ones listed below. Should I be able to saturate the connection, or is N100/N150 a bit light? I'd likely toss in 16GB of ram and an NVME.
Any recommendations/things to consider welcome. I'm in Canada, so not as easy to get variety/decent price as in US.
Firewall Appliance Mini PC,
Intel Celeron N100 Quad Core 6xIntel I226 2.5G Type-C Ethernet
VPN Router PC AES-NI 2 NVMe 2 SATA3.0 Fanless DDR5 HDMIx2
$305.32
https://www.amazon.ca/HKUXZR-Firewall-Appliance-Celeron-Ethernet/dp/B0CQG66Z3K/ref=sr_1_15?crid=346D9TSQDLJTS4 Port i226 2.5G Firewall Micro Appliance,
4K Fanless Firewall Mini PC Twin Lake N150, HDMI, DP, 4xUSB, AES-NI
VPN Router Support pfsense Openwrt, WiFi Slot, Barebone
$256.46
https://www.amazon.ca/Dozlzyp-Firewall-Appliance-Fanless-Barebone/dp/B0F4D7KQV8/ref=sr_1_160Firewall Appliance Mini PC,
Intel Celeron N150 Quad Core 4xIntel I226 2.5G Ethernet
VPN Router PC AES-NI HDMI DP Mini PC Soft Router DDR5 2*M.2 Nvme
$266.02
https://www.amazon.ca/HKUXZR-Firewall-Appliance-Celeron-Ethernet/dp/B0DVGDM8Q9/ref=sr_1_202Solid Fanless Firewall Mini PC
N150 4 Cores 4X i226-V 2.5G LANs Big Home Server
DDR4 NVMe Type-C Support OPNsense AES-NI
$249.99
https://www.amazon.ca/Fanless-Firewall-i226-V-Support-OPNsense/dp/B0F6MJHMGT/ref=sr_1_16 -
I would be sure to read through the threads here on N100/N200 systems. Many of those cheap boxes seem to ship with untuned BIOS values resulting in significantly reduced reduced performance.
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CPU wise I can tell you mine easily reaches 2.5Gb, the best I could do due to the NIC on my computer.
Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU C3558 @ 2.20GHz
4 CPUs : 1 package(s) x 4 core(s)I suspect mine will exceed 3Gb, may be stressed at 5Gb. No fancy packages running.
Compare my CPU to your proposed CPU.
Other things are important to the end speed, good NICs and maybe some tuning.
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@stephenw10 said in Hardware Recommendations for 2G Fiber Connection:
I would be sure to read through the threads here on N100/N200 systems. Many of those cheap boxes seem to ship with untuned BIOS values resulting in significantly reduced reduced performance.
Thanks @stephenw10 Other than searching N100/N200 any other keywords? Do you know if there were decent work arounds or if the hardware is just junk? I'd love to go with Netgate gear, but budget doesn't allow it (especially with the tariffs).
@AndyRH said in Hardware Recommendations for 2G Fiber Connection:
CPU wise I can tell you mine easily reaches 2.5Gb, the best I could do due to the NIC on my computer.
Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU C3558 @ 2.20GHz
4 CPUs : 1 package(s) x 4 core(s)I suspect mine will exceed 3Gb, may be stressed at 5Gb. No fancy packages running.
Compare my CPU to your proposed CPU.
Other things are important to the end speed, good NICs and maybe some tuning.
Thanks @AndyRH - Looks like the N100 (based on cpubenchmark.net) is about 2X both single and multi-core.
I have quite bit running on my box (J1900 - about 1/2 your spec and no AES-NI) and I can pin the CPU - especially with heavy VPN traffic, but no AES-NI is a big part of that - I just don't know how much things would improve if it had AES-NI. -
@guardian said in Hardware Recommendations for 2G Fiber Connection:
Do you know if there were decent work arounds or if the hardware is just junk?
In one thread users flashed an unlocked BIOS to access and change the thermal/power config to something rational. I wasn't involved directly.
