Thanks PF Sense Developers - 90Mb/s
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Just wanted to say thanks to the many developers of PFsense, it was the easiest firewall to setup and configure ever. It just worked the first time. I started using it because commercially available routers suck!
I have an unusual situation, I have a 100MB fiber internet connection. Sounds good right?!? But off the shelf hardware routers are too slow and become the bottleneck of my network. I tried a Netgear FVS336G, which has dual gigabit WAN ports and claims it can do about 60MB/s throughput. Well, enable NAT and it can not do it. Here is a speed test using the Netgear:
I started doing some research into other options, if you want a hardware router than has the throughput of a 100Mb line you have to pay a lot of money.
So, should I try another hardware firewall/router or build one?
I decided to try another possible option, the DrayTek Vigor2130 which claims it can do 800Mb/s. So I bought one of those (had never heard of the brand before I started researching). It is fast, no doubt about it. However it has the worst user interface I have ever seen; on top of so many bugs I had to give it up and go back to the Netgear.
At that point I decided to build a box on PFsense and see what it could do. So I purchased an Intel Atom D510 board and tossed in a dual port Intel NIC. PFsense was so easy to install I could not have been happier. So how does it perform? See for yourself!
So far I have not had a single issue with it, it just works! For anyone sitting on the fence wondering if they should build or buy, the answer is quite clear for me. Built it! The cost of building was cheaper than both the Netgear and the Draytek, had I built in the first place I would be about $600 richer right now.
I'm happy I can finally take advantage of the full potential of my connection.
Now, about that 200Mb line upgrade…
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Great post! I'm sure the pfSense developers appreciate all the positive feedback but having something which quantitatively shows how well pfSense performs on a given set of hardware is really useful to have around. Thanks again!
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Real numbers from a real setup seem to be so rare and yet every other post in the hardware forum is 'will box X support line speed Y'. Great job. ;D
I'd love to see some some cpu usage figures from your box under load. I assume you don't have any packages installed?Steve
