Some quick questions re PFSense..New User here.

MojoTojo

Got tired of the limitations of the usual home routers and Im about to try PF Sense, and I got a few questions in my head that I would like help on..

I know i can probably find answers by research, but what answers i can dig up in few hours could probably get answered by you guys in just a few minutes.. so pls be kind and dont tell me to go RTFM lolz

Questions

I've had PC based router before like Wingate, and while it has tons of nice features and logging, i always find it to perform slow for multiple connections (around 20 PCs) even on a quadcore unit.. so i always ended up goin back to router.. the problems i kind of noticed is that pinging the PC based router from one of the clients takes around 20ms to 50ms where as pinging to a real router is 1ms.. and when rules and policies are set on Wingate (not much though) there are tendencies of ping TIME OUTS to the router .. it's like it cant handle multiple connections very well..

Now that's WINDOWS BASED, and tat's probably where the problem is.. now w/ PFSense FreeBSD installed on a regular Sempron LE140 2GB machine, will it run better or atleast equal to regular home routers? considering typical home routers can handle up to 50 clients w/o a hitch (i've seen it in internet cafes and stuf)

How does it perform w/ DUAL WAN Setups? How's the load balancing and all? No need to go detailed but i would just like to get an impression of PF Sense. I've had lots of experience w/ DUAL WAN routers, and while on most routers LOAD BALANCING is absolute crap, i end up using them for FAIL OVERS only..
DLINK Gaming routers has this GAMEFUEL technology where it can detect ONLINE GAMING packets and prioritize them automatically, minimizing LAG during online games even when other clients are watching youtube or downloading torents.. can PFsense do this?
I noticed that there's an option to run PFSense on CF Card.. but there's no mention of SD/MicroSD or even Flash Drives.. so is it only limitted to CF cards in this sense?
Should I use a regular PC setup w/ harddrive for PFSense build, is there a way or option in PFSense so that i can use the "rest" of the HDD space as network drive space or soemthing? I'd hate to waste 250GB (smallest available HDD now) on it..
(NVM lol)

I got so much more to ask but i'll leave it at this for now haha

REgards to all!

Cry Havok

RFTM is a good thing - particularly if you're asking questions that others have asked many times. Rather than wasting 5 minutes of everybody else's time, waste an hour of yours ;)

Better, assuming you configure it with the same level of rules and package support. The more you add (in terms of packages, rules etc) the greater the overhead.
Fine and fine - see the sub-forum for multi-WAN
Sort of - see the Traffic Shaping sub-forum
Sort of - it needs to be bootable for the platform and supported by FreeBSD, it's much easier with CF since that's basically an IDE interface
Heavily discussed on the forum already. Advice is generally to treat the firewall as a firewall and not to attempt to turn it into a general purpose server
These aren't paid forums, they're all free ;)
See the answer to your identical question (2) ;

MojoTojo

@Cry:

RFTM is a good thing - particularly if you're asking questions that others have asked many times. Rather than wasting 5 minutes of everybody else's time, waste an hour of yours ;)

Better, assuming you configure it with the same level of rules and package support. The more you add (in terms of packages, rules etc) the greater the overhead.

Fine and fine - see the sub-forum for multi-WAN

Sort of - see the Traffic Shaping sub-forum

Sort of - it needs to be bootable for the platform and supported by FreeBSD, it's much easier with CF since that's basically an IDE interface

Heavily discussed on the forum already. Advice is generally to treat the firewall as a firewall and not to attempt to turn it into a general purpose server

These aren't paid forums, they're all free ;)

See the answer to your identical question (2) ;

@Cry,

thanks for the reply, the lecture as well haha

I know i'm sorry if im being lazy but i really didnt want to wast EVERYONE's 5 minutes.. just some people who's got 5m to spare.. i myself wouldnt mind answering a collection of noobie question like this once i know the answers.. it's different when a noob is asking just 1 question.. that is easily researched.. but for a collection of questions such as this … im hoping a kind soul w/ spare time can get me up to speed w/ things..

:)

anyways my replies;

thanks very much! it would've taken me a lot of reading before knowing DLINKs game fuel is similar to traffic shaping .. :)
ahh thanks then i'll do try this by making bootable flash drive.. but to followup question, how will PFsense perform under USB2.0? is the performance impact only on startup or will it lose performance everywhere? by how much you guys think?

I really dont mind some performance impact, so long as it doesnt impact internet browsing experience on 5MBPS DSL.

Well i saw some discussions on this , specially FreeNAS, but i didnt intend to do that kind of complicated stuff.. just simply have a way to access the other partition on my drive over the network as if it was as shared folder would be fine. doesnt have to be handled by PFsense.. basically i wana make use of the wasted GB of space lol

Thanks much!!!

Cry Havok

That's an attitude that'll get you flamed on many forums (if you're lucky and not just banned). Seriously - why should people keep answering the same questions time and time again? Particularly when the questions have been asked and answered dozens of times already. You should always try searching the documentation and forum before posting questions. Of course, even if it's been asked before you won't always find it as sometimes you have to know the answer to find it, but if you've made the effort that's what counts.

Assuming you're not running packages you'll have no running performance impact. Booting will take a bit longer but that's all.
You need the likes of FreeNAS to do that. It's your choice and your risk ;) I'd suggest that disk space is cheap.

MojoTojo

@Cry:

That's an attitude that'll get you flamed on many forums (if you're lucky and not just banned). Seriously - why should people keep answering the same questions time and time again? Particularly when the questions have been asked and answered dozens of times already. You should always try searching the documentation and forum before posting questions. Of course, even if it's been asked before you won't always find it as sometimes you have to know the answer to find it, but if you've made the effort that's what counts.

Assuming you're not running packages you'll have no running performance impact. Booting will take a bit longer but that's all.

You need the likes of FreeNAS to do that. It's your choice and your risk ;) I'd suggest that disk space is cheap.

haha well point taken CryHavok, thanks much

and thanks for 4) and 5).. im good now.

:D

Good day sir.