PfSense with Axiomtek NA341 Board
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Hmm, good price if it really sells for that.
Steve
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How well with that thing perform with a full install and packages? You know… VPN, SNORT, bunch of rules. GB network etc?
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Same as any Atom powered board. Not good compared to a quad core i5 but much better than the current Alix. There are plenty of people who don't need loads of packages or 1Gbps throughput. Anyone with a 100-150Mbps WAN would do well with this I would think.
Steve
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If it gets down to $150 I might call it a good deal. Thats a pretty old CPU for me to be throwing big dollars at it. Its basically the same thing thats in my acer aspire that I bought for $100 a year ago for my wife to travel with (vs an IPAD). It was considered dated tech at that time.
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If it gets down to $150 I might call it a good deal. Thats a pretty old CPU for me to be throwing big dollars at it. Its basically the same thing thats in my acer aspire that I bought for $100 a year ago for my wife to travel with (vs an IPAD). It was considered dated tech at that time.
Actually, that Atom is pretty much perfect. It's one of the best Atom chips Intel ever released. Very good power-to-speed ratio since it's TDP is only 3.5W. Look at all the other CPU's it beats.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Atom+N2600+%40+1.60GHzAnd this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_N2600#.22Cedarview.22_.2832_nm.29_2
I hope pfSense (FreeBSD) supports it. Looks like a great choice for a firewall.
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I've got a couple of Cedarview atom based boxes here and there that I like. They make for solid boxes that you can abandon and ignore but those are not for personal use. I'm here at home enough that having a fan in the box isn't the end of the world for me. Those boxes also don't run any packages at all other than a base install and VPNs. Not necessarily because they couldn't but because they have to work, so less is more.
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Actually, that Atom is pretty much perfect. It's one of the best Atom chips Intel ever released. Very good power-to-speed ratio since it's TDP is only 3.5W. Look at all the other CPU's it beats.
Check this list
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
Don't even use Search, just check the bottom of the list.I like it, but if they want to sell it the price must be reasonable for such slow CPU.
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I have weird opinions about what I use for myself. Here at home I chose the AMD 4800+ box to be my router not because of specs necessarily, although it does run circles around the best/newest atom boards I've worked with. I used my AMD because that board and PSU have been in use here for many many years and time has proven this particular box to be reliable. I trust old hardware that I've been using for ages more than a new build that I've not tested with time and use, regardless of spec. I do think this board would probably be good for people who needed reliability more than absolute throughput, but it is about $20 worth of silicon and plastic. Hopefully they won't get pricey with it.
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such slow CPU.
The CPU is more than sufficient for loads of people. Except those who just cannot resist to make their boxes crawl by implementing things such as snort. :P
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Agreed.
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such slow CPU.
The CPU is more than sufficient for loads of people. Except those who just cannot resist to make their boxes crawl by implementing things such as snort. :P
Just some basics on IDS/IPS
Firewalls aren't enough to keep some networks safe. Intrusion detection adds another layer of security.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/security/security-features/32141-intrusion-detection-basics
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I have a Jetway JBC362 with the same CPU and I am aware that the CPU is enough for some tasks.
In fact I might get 5 of them (NA341) if the reviews are positive and the price is right.
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Yeah - Its a matter of more than spec. One of my biggest gripes with all things Intel is they rape the public. You could call it a function of capitalism but its still gouging. They for sure make the best stuff, but its not sooooooooooo much better to justify their prices. They are simply too proud of their stuff. Price per performance definitely goes to AMD big time even with Intel's tech lead. However, if you are made of money, Intel is the obvious choice.
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Even in single threaded mode, any Atom will perform an order of magnitude faster than a Geode LX800 processor. While there is no Passmark score for the older Geode, reports of people on this forum and elsewhere show about 3x improvement in raw throughput.. For those of us where the ALIX board was just on the edge of being useless, that's a nice bump with some extra overhead.
If they can get the (total) power consumption down to under 10 watts, that'll be worth it. If it has the same 25-30 watt consumption of regular Atom boards, it'll be a non-starter as it might require active cooling.
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Well, then it will be less than I said. Soekris is expensive but he fills a niche… If there's more competition in that area then prices will drop.
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Does the Atom have the new cryptogryphy routines built into the CPU like the new AMDs and Some Intel chips?
I Don't see it in my list… AES-NIGeode supports AES hardware acceleration. How does it compare to a new Atom while crunching AES without the aid of add-on crypt boards?
(I'm sure the Atom is a generally better platformer, just asking this one use. It would have been great to get AES-NI on Atom)
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Yeah - Thats a tad bit better.
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Hi,
I bought this board and I followed the tutorial for embedded computers. I wrote the .img with physdiskwrite but after boot nothing else appear using the console. Using vga I see only colored chars. Any advice will be great, thanks -
Exactly which image did you write?
Is the VGA connector internal? Did it come with a header cable?
Do you see the see the bios output on either the serial console or vga?
Steve
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I have a 4 GB CF Card
I tried both pfSense-memstick-2.1-RELEASE-i386.img and pfSense-memstick-serial-2.1-RELEASE-i386.img
I connected the monitor using vga cable ( the board comes with integrated VGA connector )
I also set same settings ( bts / seconnd ) in bios, serial port adapter and client. I see how appliance boots, I can navigate on bios and that's all
Thank you
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For CF, you should use nanobsd (or nanobsd_vga), not memstick.
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sorry, I was in a hurry
pfSense-2.1.1-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd.img
pfSense-2.1.1-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd_vga.imgI followed this tutorial too : https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/HOWTO_Install_pfSense
I replaced config file ( .xml ) but nothing, same results -
Hmm, I'm missing something. You were able to replace the config.xml file? How did you do that? The box had booted pfSense or you mounted the card in a BSD machine?
If you are getting to the end of the POST messages from the BIOS and then you see nothing from either image on either the VGA or console port then the most likely cause is that the images are not writing to the card correctly. Do you see any errors when writing the image? You could try using the 2GB images instead to ensure they are fitting on the card.Steve
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Shows me the boot menu F1, F2, and then the message: "/".
Should be fine if I follow the documentation -
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Installing_pfSense
"If everything is configured correctly you should see the kernel beginning to load. At systems with VGA the output will stop displaying a "/" at the screen. From that point on all output is at COM1. Please check the bootup process there by using a null modemcable and a terminal program."This is the last message I have seen on both monitor and serial ( HyperTerminal, Putty )
On writeing the img to CF i had no error messages
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Ok. Have you ever seen anything on the serial console? Have you proved the connection on some other hardware? Like it says in the doc the standard Nano image switches it's console output to the serial port at that point so your serial terminal setup not working correctly matches those symptoms. That doesn't explain the nano+vga images though.
You are seeing the FreeBSD bootloader though so it looks at though the images are writing to the card correctly and the bios is correctly booting it though so that's good. ;)
Steve
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Since it's hanging at the 'spinner' you could try these HD mode suggestions:
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting#BIOS.2FDisk_ErrorsSteve
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Not helped :(
I tried with the 2Gb img and same results
Is any way to start instalation from a bootable usb ? I tried with usb stick and usb dvd but won't boot, hiren's cd also boots
Please give me other suggests, thank you -
If it will boot from USB then you can write the Nano images straight to the USB stick and boot from that.
To boot anything via USB you probably have to interrupt the boot loader and set a delay. See:
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting#Booting_from_USBSurprised it wouldn't boot from CF though. :-\ As a test you could try booting an alternative image from the CF. For example you could use this FreeDOS image:
https://sites.google.com/site/pfsensefirebox/home/FreeDOSBios2.img.gz
That boots to a console at 9600bps on com1.Steve
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I tried with FreeDOS, is booting even if it stops asking me for mouse, at COM1, but this is another work :)
what I do with pfSense ?
I tried to boot over the SATA port with a DVD RW, loader stop on console at:
CD Loader 1.2Building the boot loader arguments
Looking up /BOOT/LOADER… Found
Relocating the loader and the BTX
Starting the BTX loader
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Was that via VGA or serial?
That's odd. It boots the FreeDOS image fine but hangs booting pfSense. :-\ Hmm, must be something it doesn't like about the disk controller or some other piece of hardware. Nothing on that board looks too exotic though and you tried the various HD modes in the BIOS?.Steve
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I tried FreeBSD 9.1 amd64, i386, memstick and FreeBSD 10 too
On Monitor ( via vga )
On Terminal ( via serial console )
With pfSense Embeded 4GB ( or 2GB ) CF VGA or Serial img:
Monitor: same as FreeBSD
Terminal:
No any good results with IDE or AHCI setting in BIOS
Also I tried installing Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit, everything worked OK
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Hmm, that's….. interesting.
Some time ago there was an issue with the graphics drivers for the newer (at that time) Atoms such as the D2500. The driver was eventually fixed upstream and is now included in pfSense. I never saw the problem first hand but descriptions of it sound a lot like what you're seeing. There were work-arounds at the time I seem to recall.You could try, just as a test, booting a 1.2.3 image. They didn't suffer from that problem. If that works you can probably upgrade in place to 2.1.1.
Steve