Is this build good enough?

Stamey

So if i could find a provider that can do those speeds, would i have to decide on another build?

kejianshi

I'm not sure. I'm talking units of 50 MB/s now. Not sure if we are on the same page.

But yeah. I'd think 50 MB/s with VPN and snort would push that box pretty hard.

Lots of people have them I think. Maybe one of them will comment.

I have an old dual core running at 2.4 GHZ and When I do SFTP transfer from a gigabit connection to that 10 MB/s connection the pfsense is sitting on it pushes it pretty hard.

And VPN is all I run on that box.

Stamey

I was talking about 50 megabits, not 50 megabytes. ><

kejianshi

I put an extra zero in by accident. Changing it now.

I think it will be close for you. Those things are not built for speed.

Stamey

Hmm so if i had another box that i wanted to know about, can I list the specs here or start another topic? It's a A8 3800 Class APU…

kejianshi

That CPU is 9x or 10x faster. It will handle whatever you throw at it more than likely.

Stamey

I have one more question!!! I have a Zotac Zbox nano id63, I have upgraded it to 4gb and a 60Gb SSD, will this do the job I want?

http://www.amazon.com/Zotac-ZBOX-Intel-Barebone-ZBOXNANO-ID63-U/dp/B00DQ5LRH6

kejianshi

I think its plenty fast enough and the SSD is big enough.

I've no idea if it will install or not - May or may not be compatible.

You have one NIC on that machine right? Whats your plan to get WAN and LAN?

Stamey

I was thinking about a Usb 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapter like this one,

http://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-SuperSpeed-Gigabit-Ethernet/dp/B00BBD7NFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413750153&sr=8-1&keywords=usb+3.0+ethernet+adapter

kejianshi

My advice, no USB network interfaces…

(I await the howling masses to point out all the successful instances of USB NICs now)

It just seems to me that its usually more trouble than its worth.

Stamey

Great, nothing else I can do to the Zotac? Btw, thanks for helping me!

kejianshi

There is a way… A single NIC will work fine if you use a VLAN capable switch.

You would need for it to be able to use Tagged VLAN as well as untagged.

Then you could get WAN/LAN over 1 NIC.

But really, please check compatibility before buying a machine.

kejianshi

Are you so sure you need snort?

Stamey

Not really.

kejianshi

Without the CPU intensive packages, like snort - Just using VPN and firewall, you can probably be ok with the APU.

Stamey

The a8? or the main topic one? Also I found this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833114054

Can I replace the wireless with that?

kejianshi

I would prefer the A8 - personal preference. Assuming compatibility of the mobo.

Bit I was talking about the 1st APU you mentioned.

Stamey

Okay, a8 it is. Just have to find a small case for the micro atx motherboard!, Thanks for your help!!

kejianshi

Yeah - but you need to be careful which motherboard you buy.
Check to be sure there have been a few successful pfsense installs at least.

Don't just buy a board based on spec with no checking to be sure it will boot and run pfsense.

Mateh

Hey there.
I'm the author of that blog post you linked.

Just to weigh in. I actually own an Intel NUC (this doesn't guarantee capability, just some side information) and successfully managed to install pfSense 2.2. The USB 3.0 NICs worked fine however they are only supported in 2.2. I maxed my 100mbit connection using one of these adapters. For some reason, as soon as I started using two, the connection peaked at about 40mbps.
This may be a bug or hardware limitation or something, I'm not sure.

http://www.amazon.com/ORICO-Gigabit-Ethernet-Chromebook-Specific/dp/B00DHAQL3K

But yeah. You could happily use 2.2, on board LAN and a USB 3.0 Ethernet adapter. Bear in mind that 2.2 is currently BETA.

Mat