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    New Alix board for 2013

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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

      Does it cause problems when you see the stuck beacon errors or just spams the logs?

      Steve

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      • G
        gidi
        last edited by

        Transfers get very jumpy or stop making progress for some time

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        • stephenw10S
          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
          last edited by

          Ah ok but it recovers without intervention? My own home box occasionally shoots out some stuck beacons, a lot less with hw.ath.bstuck set to 8, but never gives me any trouble.

          Steve

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          • O
            onggie
            last edited by

            Hi all just wanting some input. I have never used Pfsense before. I'm building a house and hardwiring the whole house. I will have fiber internet. Really I'm going with Pfsense because I want to learn about it. Looking for something low power and to suite a family.

            Will this piece of hardware be fine seems pretty cost effective as opposed from me building a new machine. And I want it is standalone and not deploy another VM.

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            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by

              What sort of fibre internet? What speed?
              I don't believe this box will pass 1Gbps. Do we have any throughput tests from the new board yet? (as opposed to the prototype)

              Steve

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              • M
                MaxPF
                last edited by

                I really want to order one, but I'm undecided if I should wait few weeks for the 4GB version to become available or just go with the 2GB now. I don't think I really need 4GB since I'm ok now with an Alix 2d13, but for just $20 more it may be a good way to start playing with snort or squid.

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                • O
                  onggie
                  last edited by

                  @stephenw10:

                  What sort of fibre internet? What speed?
                  I don't believe this box will pass 1Gbps. Do we have any throughput tests from the new board yet? (as opposed to the prototype)

                  Steve

                  Thanks for the reply, nothing past 1gbps, at the moment can only get 100mbps speeds.

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    If you read through this thread I think we've seen two figures for throughput, ~350Mbps and ~450Mbps. Different test methods and using the prototype board so those figures are obviously a bit vague.

                    Steve

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                    • O
                      olivier
                      last edited by

                      Here is a network performance bench of the APU1c (2Go of RAM) under FreeBSD 11-current.

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                      • stephenw10S
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by

                        Comprehensive, thanks.

                        Steve

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                        • M
                          MaxPF
                          last edited by

                          Just when I decided to go with the 2GB model instead of waiting for the 4GB, it sold out.

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                          • D
                            dolomite792
                            last edited by

                            So is this board worth buying yet?  Will the recommended wifi card work properly?  Or should I say would I have to wrestle with it for hours via command line getting it to work with band aid fixes? (I read that pfsense doesn't work with N mode wifi signal or freebsd I should say)  Are there any alternatives for it also?  Also does that heat sink that I saw in some other photos come with the motherboard kit and thermal paste when you purchase it?  I saw that there is a sata port on the board also, does anyone know where you could plug in a sata power cable on the board and what type of connector you would need to buy say if you wanted to use a large 2.5 inch hard drive?

                            I am really excited to get started with pfsense for home use (and maybe more) and I would like to use snort and squid squid guard etc.  It looks like this board would be a great low/hassle low power solution to achieving this that is unless anyone believes there to be many obstacles with it yet.

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                            • M
                              MaxPF
                              last edited by

                              @dolomite792:

                              So is this board worth buying yet?  Will the recommended wifi card work properly?  Or should I say would I have to wrestle with it for hours via command line getting it to work with band aid fixes? (I read that pfsense doesn't work with N mode wifi signal or freebsd I should say)  Are there any alternatives for it also?  Also does that heat sink that I saw in some other photos come with the motherboard kit and thermal paste when you purchase it?  I saw that there is a sata port on the board also, does anyone know where you could plug in a sata power cable on the board and what type of connector you would need to buy say if you wanted to use a large 2.5 inch hard drive?

                              I am really excited to get started with pfsense for home use (and maybe more) and I would like to use snort and squid squid guard etc.  It looks like this board would be a great low/hassle low power solution to achieving this that is unless anyone believes there to be many obstacles with it yet.

                              As far as I know the wifi card is currently not supported in 2.1 and 2.1.1, but it should work in 2.2. The heat spreader is included with the board. The website says "1 SATA + power connector" so I assume that one of the headers on the board can be used for that.

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                              • T
                                tmueko
                                last edited by

                                I just testet the new APU-Board from PC-Engines and I am very disappointed:

                                Network performance is very poor, below 15MB/sec scp from host to /dev/null

                                aes-128 is about 2% of Alix as Hardware-Crypto ist missing!

                                using: "openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc -mr"

                                |

                                | | 16 bytes | 64 bytes | 256 bytes | 1024 bytes | 8192 bytes |
                                | apu(i386) | 17647920.62 | 19119871.30 | 19119871.30 | 19856786.89 | 19884175.64 |
                                | apu(amd64) | 31838188.68 | 33707485.47 | 35294343.25 | 36019144.06 | 36141132.37 |
                                | alix(glxb) | 9330604.35 | 51383196.64 | 228813355.80 | 571595559.02 | 21593993900.75 |
                                | hifn799(miniPCI) | 29525399.38 | 88806702.25 | 455857889.95 | 1052874486.91 | 20549906447.53 |

                                So, for <= 100MBit, use Alix; for >= 100Mbit, use other Hardware (Intel-Chipset) and Hardware-Encrytion.

                                Just my 5 ct. |

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                                • forbiddenlakeF
                                  forbiddenlake
                                  last edited by

                                  @MaxPF:

                                  Just when I decided to go with the 2GB model instead of waiting for the 4GB, it sold out.

                                  what country are you in?  Check their other distributors.  I just ordered an APU1C from mini-box.com (free US shipping!).

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                                  • stephenw10S
                                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                    last edited by

                                    @tmueko:

                                    Network performance is very poor, below 15MB/sec scp from host to /dev/null

                                    Why use SCP? That's testing crypto and network in combination. Hardly a fair test unless you're running that specifically.

                                    Steve

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                                    • W
                                      watercooled
                                      last edited by

                                      Add -elapsed to that openssl command to measure elapsed time, rather than CPU time. As the code doesn't run on the CPU with the hardware test, you get massively inaccurate results. Just think about the results for a second - ~20GB/s throughput?

                                      This is more the sort of result you should be getting with -elapsed: http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/bx/blosxom.cgi/index.front?-tags=geode

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                                      • T
                                        tmueko
                                        last edited by

                                        I aslo tried to just use the APU as Gbit-Gateway with the ame bad results.

                                        Using the "-elapsed" Option gives complete different results!

                                        APU
                                        type            16 bytes    64 bytes    256 bytes  1024 bytes  8192 bytes
                                        aes-256-cbc      25906.20k    27743.31k    28145.80k    28552.07k    28663.62k
                                        aes-128-cbc      31903.42k    34736.06k    35349.14k    35994.51k    36190.80k

                                        ALIX
                                        aes-128-cbc        439.80k    1711.46k    5388.38k    15939.21k    28228.88k
                                        aes-256-cbc      3880.35k    4004.79k    4381.44k    4132.74k    4014.75k

                                        NA820(hifn)
                                        aes-128-cbc        617.01k    2462.52k    7257.86k    13492.76k    21152.43k
                                        aes-256-cbc        616.61k    2412.38k    7626.04k    15504.02k    23657.20k

                                        I think I'll try to find a bottleneck … maybe a brocken cable...

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                                        • W
                                          watercooled
                                          last edited by

                                          Do you have a way of measuring idle/load power consumption?

                                          Also, what's the thermal solution like? Retailers I've checked say it comes with an aluminium heat spreader, but don't go into much detail about how the system works.

                                          For example, does the heat spreader come bonded to the processor die somehow and contact the enclosure via some thermal paste?

                                          Edit: NVM, I've just found this page, linked by a retailer: http://www.pcengines.ch/apucool.htm

                                          Edit2: connorxxl beat me to it. :P

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                                          • C
                                            connorxxl
                                            last edited by

                                            See http://www.pcengines.ch/apucool.htm.

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