Recommended hardware for home 1Gbps WAN
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Hi,
I want to replace my dd-wrt box with pfSense as we're upgrading to 1Gbps at home.Is there any recommended SOHO hardware with built in WiFi (abgn) that will work and provide for 1Gbps WAN throughput, or do i have to build my own box?
Thanks
Maciej -
Hmmm… SOHO(-priced) hardware that will provide 1Gbps WAN throughput, might not be so easy to find.
However if your needs are limited to simple routing and firewalling between WAN and LAN (i.e. no DMZ, no VLANs, no Snort, no Squid, no high-speed VPNs etc) then it's doable.
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Hmmm… SOHO(-priced) hardware that will provide 1Gbps WAN throughput, might not be so easy to find.
However if your needs are limited to simple routing and firewalling between WAN and LAN (i.e. no DMZ, no VLANs, no Snort, no Squid, no high-speed VPNs etc) then it's doable.
The needs are indeed quite simple, what i need is the ability to configure two public ipv4 addresses and do some port forwarding on those. The goal is below €250.
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Wifi-N still isn't supported in pfSense so you would need to look at an external AP or router configured as such if you need Wifi-N support.
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Wifi-N still isn't supported in pfSense so you would need to look at an external AP or router configured as such if you need Wifi-N support.
Not a problem, i can use my old Linksys E3000 to do the WiFi part then.
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http://netgear.dk/home/products/All-in-One-WiFi-Storage-Routers/WNDR4700.aspx#two
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http://netgear.dk/home/products/All-in-One-WiFi-Storage-Routers/WNDR4700.aspx#two
I would not expect that router to actually route close to 1Gb of data. Simply having a Gb interface on the WAN side does not indicate that it can saturate it. It only takes 101Mb of routing performance to justify putting a Gb interface on the WAN.
I looked at a few reviews and I couldn't seem to find anyone actually testing the routing throughput.
If you look at it logically, there's good reason to have Gb on the LAN side for multiple reasons, the onboard file sharing aspects being a large one. Since you have Gb Physical anyway, it's probably actually cheaper to leave the WAN as Gb too, since you're basically slicing up a Gb switch (probably in to VLANs internally, Linksys did that all the way back to the WRT54G's.)
Having Gb on the WAN as a side effect of having it on LAN does not make the internal routing engine capable of Gb routing; and I would not expect a SOHO router to do so. Hell, I probably wouldn't expect an Enterprise router that just has Gb interfaces to route 1Gb of traffic unless it was advertised to do so. And this one does not appear to advertise any such capability. It's quite possible it can route over 100Mb, maybe a few hundred, but if it was 1Gb or close, I'm sure they'd advertise it since that'd be quite a selling point for people expecting very high speed internet access being available. (cough google fiber cough)
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Depending on services, a lot of the SOHO routers can push 2-300Mbit easily nowadays.
It gets tricky when doing it with SPI asf.
It also depends on if its continous throughput or just peaking traffic.
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http://netgear.dk/home/products/All-in-One-WiFi-Storage-Routers/WNDR4700.aspx#two
According to smallnetbuilder.com, this box will only manage about 500Mbps.
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Ok. But what would be the actual speed on the ISP's 1Gbit connection?
1Gbit is the maximum, but not always achievable speed. So I bet you would come a long way doing 500Mbps routing in the Netgear box.
When I do tests of real world traffic on my connections (1gbit) then ~700Mbit throughput is normal. But thats on server class hardware from IBM.
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You will able to do this with a system based on a low end sandybridge CPU, g620 for example.
There are a number of threads about this.E.g. http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,43536.0.html
Steve
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My pfSense box is built with 2 Intel Pro/1000 NIC's and an Ivy Bridge i3 3220 CPU. It runs from ~400Mhz up to 3.3Ghz and uses very little power, the whole box uses 30-40w max. I have a small 64GB Samsung SSD 430 in there for storage, and a seasonic 300W psu. Don't worry about getting a T series 35w cpu, as that only really matters if the CPU is pegged at 100% use all the time. When it's idle it will run on a few watts (like 5 or so) regardless of the model!! My i3 3220 is a 55w TDP cpu, however the entire box uses 30-40w at the wall max, measured with a Kill-A-Watt.
