Pfsense in laptop having one lan port.
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I want to install pf-sense in my laptop.
But my laptop has only one LAN card(built-in).
Suggest me that how i can increase ports of LAN Card. Keep in mind that i need Pf sense for load balancing and i also need best performance.
Thank you -
Get a new hardware platform. Upgrading a laptop for "best performance" will be costly.
You can use VLANs and a VLAN-capable switch. Of course, all the traffic will go over the built-in LAN port of the laptop.
If you need to load-balance servers, you might consider to install additional NICs in one server and run pfSense in a virtual machine.
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Use VLANs. Requires VLAN capable switch. Typically classified as Smart or Managed Switch.
Add a PC card NIC to the laptop for the WAN interface.
Add a USB NIC to the laptop for the WAN or additional interface.
It's not that costly and many laptops of the last 10 years can make very capable pfSense routers with little to no additional expense. Especially if the onboard NIC is already 100 mb or better.
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The Express Card slot has a maximum bandwidth of 2Gb/second, so it won't achieve full line speed with a dual GbE NIC (like the Exsys EX-6088).
"Best performance" doesn't sound like 100MBit or USB NICs are an option, so I assume that the latop in question already has a GbE NIC.