What hardware should I use for a VPN connection?

M0rph2020

I was wanting to build a pfsense box that would be used with a openvpn connection. My VPN uses 2048 bit RSA keys size, AES-256-CBC Data Channel. I want to be able to get a throughput of atleast 50+ Mbs. I user in other forums suggested something like this Supermicro: 5018A-FTN4 (NOTE: Access panel on front for network appliances. 1U Rackmount only needs Hard Drive and Memory, 2400Mhz 8 Core, Intel i354 Quad GbE, Intel QuickAssist. I really dont want a rackmount and would prefer a mini-itx or micro-itx case just something that will not take up much space but will be able to everything I need for a VPN connection. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks

stephenw10

That will certainly do it but it's brand new in FreeBSD terms so some things may not be fully supported yet. You don't need a box that powerful to pass 50Mbps. A much older Atom will do ~50Mbps at AES-256. See: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=27780.0
That is IPSec which is generally slightly faster.

Are you using this box for anything besides the VPN termination?

Steve

jasonlitka

I've got that board at home, though mine is in a M350 case. The USB 3.0 ports don't work yet but the NICs are fine under 2.1.1. It is capable of WAY more than 50Mbit/s of OpenVPN.

stephenw10

I see that Netgate have some throughput figures up for that now:
http://store.netgate.com/Firewall/C2758.aspx

Steve

jasonlitka

@stephenw10:

I see that Netgate have some throughput figures up for that now:
http://store.netgate.com/Firewall/C2758.aspx

Steve

I may have to question their methodology on this one. I'm seeing much better numbers over an OpenVPN BF-CBC tunnel. Based on my CPU usage at 85Mbit/s, I'm guessing that it caps out between 400 and 500 Mbit/s.

stephenw10

Interesting. CPU usage across 8 cores may be somewhat non-linear perhaps, harder to extrapolate.
They do have that data labelled as 'preliminary' so perhaps so test refinements are still to come.

Steve

jasonlitka

@stephenw10:

Interesting. CPU usage across 8 cores may be somewhat non-linear perhaps, harder to extrapolate.
They do have that data labelled as 'preliminary' so perhaps so test refinements are still to come.

Steve

I was talking per core.