PfSense on Zyxel

CharlyTango · Oct 15, 2013, 12:03 PM

Hi Folks,

i've got an old Zyxel Zywall 35 with 6 Ports.

Has anybody a glue whether it is possible to install a 2.1 pfSense on this hardware ?
Would be nice to recycle it.

Regards,
CT

shouptech · Oct 15, 2013, 12:08 PM

First step would be to determine if it is based on x86 hardware. If so, it would be probable. Pull off the heatsinks on the mainboard and see if there is an Intel or AMD chip.

stephenw10 · Oct 15, 2013, 1:17 PM

Hard to find much about that box but it looks like it has a custom ASIC and 32 or 64MB of RAM. The ASIC may run along side an X86 CPU, like the Watchguard V-Class, in which case you might get pfSense to run after upgrading the RAM (if that's possible). Without using the ASIC the perfomance will be low compared to the original spec.

Steve

David_W · Oct 16, 2013, 4:08 PM

That generation of ZyWALLs are ARM based, so there's no chance of running pfSense on them. At some point in the future, FreeBSD on ARM may mature enough to use this sort of hardware, but these boxes are pretty small and limited by modern standards (they were launched in 2005, if I remember correctly).