High load cable network
-
Hi at all. Next month we will start a new project in collaboration with a local cable tv, oriented to give cheap broadband access to his customers (from 6,00€/month).
Cisco, Juniper and similar brands have very expensive prices for routers in cable platform. And I have been using pfsense routing for two years in a 100 customers wireless network.
I have estimated 300 customers the first year and over 800 customers for the second year. Can I be confident with pfsense at these levels? ???
PD: Of course, if we use pfsense for the task, we will use the commercial support. And we won't forget the donations.
-
It's almost certain to be a matter of hardware choice. The underlying OS is about as reliable as it comes.
As for "levels", you mention customer numbers but not bandwidths - 1000 customers on a 1 Mb service is a different situation from 300 customers on a 50 Mb service. The hardware the copes with the former may well choke on the latter.
-
I forgot to put customer bandwidth :P.
Will be two options: 256/64 kbps adn 512/128 kbps
-
So, in your first couple of years you're looking at pushing peak bandwidth of (about) 600 Mb/s. On the assumption that you'd have more than one pfSense host (to minimise the problems that will occur when the hardware dies) you'd only be pushing a peak of about 300 Mb/s through each box under normal conditions - that should be well within the bounds of good hardware - and well beyond the limits of cheap hardware.
If you weren't already planning it I would suggest that, if you do this, you consider getting access to a traffic generator so you can test your hardware under the theoretical maximum loads.
-
Search the forum and mailing list for PCI-E discussions.
-
As long as you're using new server class hardware you'll be fine at those numbers.
