Hardware choices with internal switch? (ala Linksys)
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On those they are individually addressable ports. You can bridge together any interfaces you want like that though. You wouldn't need VLANs to bridge them together. (Though you can bridge VLANs if you really want to)
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Ah - yep, I completely forgot about bridging. Thanks for the reminder, Jimp!
Depending on your budget, you can just get a mini-itx box with a PCIx riser and add a quad-port PCI NIC. That could potentially give you 6 ports (2 onboard and 4 via expansion card).
I was just pricing a similar system from mini-box.com. This is the M300 barebones box for $210 and comes with a PCI riser card - http://www.mini-box.com/Mini-Box-M350-Barebone-System. You can add additional parts as necessary (scroll to the bottom). Simply add a quad-port ethernet card and you are in business.
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Jimp, please correct me if I'm wrong: with bridged interfaces the CPU still has to push the traffic between the IFs, right?
This would limit the amount of traffic between IFs to what the CPU/bus can handle as compared to a dedicated switch which should be able to do this at link speed easily. -
Jimp, please correct me if I'm wrong: with bridged interfaces the CPU still has to push the traffic between the IFs, right?
This would limit the amount of traffic between IFs to what the CPU/bus can handle as compared to a dedicated switch which should be able to do this at link speed easily.That is correct. A real switch will always be better in this situation unless you need to control traffic between ports.
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So that being said, nobody knows of a product which has an internal switch that can operate as a single LAN "port" as far as pfSense is concerned?
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Bump.
No other suggestions?
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I suppose you're looking for something like that:
http://www.pcloft.com/asinrocapcie.html
–> A NIC with integrated switch. -
That looks like what I'm looking for, but it has other things that I hope I can turn off. I need to find out of the chip they use works with BSD.
Edit:
Found one. The HP NC150T.It's a lot more than I want to spend, but it's exactly. Now to see if there is a 100Mb (& cheaper) alternative.
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I suppose you're looking for something like that:
http://www.pcloft.com/asinrocapcie.html
–> A NIC with integrated switch.I just built a system with a card very close to this and it shows up as a single network port but all 4 ports work great.
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Williamray507, what card did you use?
I'm looking for such a card myself right now. -
I'm firing this topic back up again to see if the landscape has changed.
Has anyone come up with an inexpensive pfSense compatible box (approx ALIX speed or better) that has a 4-port integrated LAN switch? I'm still at a point where it is difficult to recommend pfSense to my friends who only need 3 or 4 PC's plugged in without using a separate switch. dd-wrt usually fills that void, but it's impossible to upgrade remotely.
