Building my very first mini-itx pfsense firewall / router.

RamGuy · Apr 6, 2011, 9:41 PM

Let's start with the obvious, I'm all new to the idea of running pfsense but since my retailer in Norway cannot provide the Cisco Small Business RV 220W Firewall / Router I've come to the conclusion that I might try building something on my own instead.

I could always purchase something pre-built from Hacom but then you pay extra for getting it pre-built as well as the shipment to Norway is far from being cheap.
So I was thinking of going for something mini-itx based with at least 2x Gigabit LAN and I already have one Ubiquiti SR71-E (AR9285 Mini-PCIe) for the wireless part if it's supported.

Never been a huge fan of Intel Atom really so was considering something in the lines of LGA1156 or LGA1155 but it might be hard finding boards supported by pfsense 2.0 RC1?
Here in Norway I've got options like:

Asus P8H67-I
Gigabyte GA-H67N-USB3-B3
Zotac H67ITX-C-E

But they all seem to utilize the Realtek 8111E NIC which isn't supported? Optional I could simply go for a dual-NIC Intel Pro/1000 NIC but they are priced rather silly here in Norway and the PCI-Express editions aren't supported anyway?

tjadhav · Apr 8, 2011, 5:11 PM

You can try to get a daughter card like this one with Intel controllers;

AD3INLANG Intel 82541PI
Intel 3 port Gigabit Ethernet

dreamslacker · Apr 9, 2011, 7:06 AM

@RamGuy:

But they all seem to utilize the Realtek 8111E NIC which isn't supported? Optional I could simply go for a dual-NIC Intel Pro/1000 NIC but they are priced rather silly here in Norway and the PCI-Express editions aren't supported anyway?

The Intel PT series PCIe cards are supported by pfsense 2.0. You can even get the cheaper CT series PCIe x1 NICs which will also work under pfsense 2.0. The former can be bought off eBay though they aren't exactly cheap.