300MHz Geode okay for 20Mb+ internet connection?
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I use m0n0wall on an Alix 2C3 (500MHz Geode LX800) and when going at full-speed on my 24Mb connection at about 2.7 megabytes per second and 250kB/sec up, CPU usage with m0n0 is about 2 to 3%. I'd imagine that it would be able to support quite a bit more speed. My m0n0 does traffic shaping and firewalling on a CF card.
However, pfSense isn't as lean as m0n0, so perhaps it might be a little different, but I would imagine it would be mostly similar. The only reason I don't actually use pfSense is because at the time I set it up I happened to use a version which didn't support shaping and firewalling at the same time.
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Thanks, that's good to know.
I do wonder about the CPU numbers though. I read somewhere that they can be misleading because they don't include time spent in interrupts, which can be a lot with naff cards like the Realteks.
I guess for £20 I might as well just try it.
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see http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=49
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I think we should also put a little note in there that the NIC makes a huge difference on throughput. For example, I had a VIA C3 550Mhz and I couldn't push more than ~17Mbps because I was maxxing out the CPU with interrupts. The onboard NIC was a VIA and the PCI NIC was a Realtek. Even with polling enabled.
Now, I'm running all Intel NICS and see about 0.1% usage on interrupts at 20Mbps.
Riley
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That page is getting updated soon with much more info, including notes on NIC differences, pulling from content from the coming pfSense book.
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Sweet!!
Riley
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How badly is the on-board Realtek NIC likely to slow things down? I have a PCI Intel NIC as the second connection.
Which is best to use as LAN/WAN, or doesn't it make much difference?
I will be using traffic shaping if it makes any difference.
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See the (many) threads on the issue, including a post from me in the last week or so.
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Basically if you want that it works dont use realtek's and stick to intel.
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I got everything up and running today. Limited to 10Mb with polling off, 6.5Mb with it on. FAIL.
I'm going to get a dual Intel NIC off eBay and see if that fixes things. I really hope it does.
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I installed the dual NIC (Compaq, two Intel chips, fxp) and now the machine won't boot :(
I can see it gets as far as "Configuring WAN interface…" on the serial console. I read that DHCP time-out can be up to 20 minutes, but I waited half and hour and it still didn't work. I also tried a clean install from the original image to erase all configuration. After assigning interfaces, it hung again.
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DHCP timeout will never be more than a minute (there was a version quite a while ago with a bug that made it wait longer, long since resolved). Something going on with your hardware not playing well together. Try the usual, BIOS update, disable PNP OS.
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I tried everything, but it just won't work. I even tried another card with different PCI controller. I guess this box just does not like having more than one PCI device :(
I am looking for more suitable and cheap hardware. As usual it seems to be a case of "good, fast, cheap - pick any two" :(
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Is your power supply capable of supplying the current needed by the dual NIC PCI card?
Maybe the box was built to a price (or size) and consequently the power supply doesn't have much margin.
