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    Installing onto CF card. Does this affect speeds ?

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    • ?
      Guest
      last edited by

      Hi all,

      I am currently using monowall and it is not shaping my VOIP properly.  Basically controls the upload fine, but the download shaping isn't there so if we are downloading the voice goes all choppy.

      I am interested in knowing about pfsense.  Currently I only have a 16mb compact flash but i'll pickup a 2gb version tomorrow.  How will installing the full version of PFSense onto a CF card compare to a hard drive ?  I am only using the pfsense as a Firewall, QOS and Port forwarding.  No DHCP etc etc.  We have server 2003 for that.  So will running the whole thing off a CF card affect its overall running ?  I don't want to install a HDD due to noise and heat.

      The server is a PIII 500mhz, with 256mb Ram and will have a 2gb CF card.

      Opinions plz.

      Regards,

      Joel

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      • S
        sullrich
        last edited by

        pfSense will only use 64 megs so throwing a 2gb card is a waste unless you resize the partition using the instructions on the wiki.

        Compact flash cards do slow down the boot process but once the machine is up and running it makes very little difference.

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        • JeGrJ
          JeGr LAYER 8 Moderator
          last edited by

          I can cover that :) Slow boot, but works as charme afterwards ;)

          Don't forget to upvote 👍 those who kindly offered their time and brainpower to help you!

          If you're interested, I'm available to discuss details of German-speaking paid support (for companies) if needed.

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          • Z
            ZGamer
            last edited by

            @Grey:

            I can cover that :) Slow boot, but works as charme afterwards ;)

            Makes a  difference there and whenever anything is read/written to the compact flash card….ie there will be a delay when you hit apply when adjusting the configuration.

            –------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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            • JeGrJ
              JeGr LAYER 8 Moderator
              last edited by

              By the system speed mentioned above and a nice and performant CF card there isn't so much of a delay in writing. Throughput on my CF cards is about 15MB/s on a "normal" system (not an embedded). On the embedded, you're right, speed is definitly affected by write perfomance on the CF disc. But on some kind of "mini-pc" I haven't felt that much of a delay :)

              Don't forget to upvote 👍 those who kindly offered their time and brainpower to help you!

              If you're interested, I'm available to discuss details of German-speaking paid support (for companies) if needed.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • P
                pcatiprodotnet
                last edited by

                The following CF seems to be the fastest available with a reasonable price, and it claims to function better in extreme weather conditions.  It has 6x faster reads & writes than my Kingston CF cards.  I need to stock up on a few of these for my outdoor WRAP.2C units.  Please advise if there's something better…
                http://www.beachcamera.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=SDCF256EXT

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                • L
                  lsf
                  last edited by

                  http://www.twinmos.com/flash/flash_p_cfc_140x.htm

                  A 256MB should be about 15$ 1024mb about 40$ (that is aprox. what I pay here in Norway )

                  Ultra high speed! for high-end digital photograph.
                  (Read: 21 MB/sec, Write: 16.2 MB/sec, 140X)

                  BTW. SANDISK is in general a very good choice for CF's. I also have quite a few of the Twinmos 140X cards and so far they have been very reliable.

                  -lsf

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                  • C
                    cmb
                    last edited by

                    @.Joel:

                    I am currently using monowall and it is not shaping my VOIP properly.  Basically controls the upload fine, but the download shaping isn't there so if we are downloading the voice goes all choppy.

                    You can't effectively control download using any type of QoS or traffic shaping.  You'd have to control your ISP's end of the link to control download speed.

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