RaspberryPi model 2 6x the power for running pfsense on
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Using USB3 Gigabit nics will give you yet faster throughput compared to using USB2 10/100 nics.
Other tricks to speed it up include little things like switching off the a time (noatime) and dir a time (nodiratime) as the SD writes slow things up a bit. You'll get faster write speeds from a usb external hd than a SD card write, even a 100Mb/s write speed class 10 microsd card is still slow than a 7 year old usb wd external hd. -
The pi2 has usb 2.0 ports. Also i believe the sd card is hooked to the usb hardware which means that the entire filesystem/built-in ethernet/plugin drives/plugin nics are running off the same chip, which was chosen because it's cheap rather than because it's fast. So whatever the max bandwidth of that chip, that's probably the max theoretical bandwidth of all your i/o combined.
So you want to spend $50 usd or so to get a basic pi2 going, plus buy 1 ethernet nic, put everything together and try to get pfsense going on it. Or, buy a plug and play wifi router from amazon for $20?
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Or grab a refurbished HP or Lenovo small form factor desktop from NewEgg or off ebay for around $100 and have a lot more flexibility. More power use but you can cut that back by unplugging all the hardware you don't need running.
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There are countless really neat ideas for the pi. I use one as a stratum 1 time server and two for dns/dhcp failover pairs.
The time server is interesting, do you use it as an NTP server for pfSense and what did you add to the basic Pi to get the time sync?
It's not that interesting. We're looking at doing a GPS-disciplined clock (oscillator) as a lure for the Minnowboard Max.
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a nice cheap and low power a squid 3 or openvpn server
there is a ddwrt distro for this unit (from the older pi, works here)
Good, Fast, Cheap: pick two.
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Following some of the tips in another topic here on NTP and GPS I've been looking at this module, either as an add-on to a Pi or directly into my pfSense box.
https://www.adafruit.com/products/746
Not bad for $40 with a $4 antenna cable converter and a $13 external antenna.
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That adafruit one is the one I have on my pi. Without the antenna it's nearly worthless unless you have a lot of visible sky.
I agree that a stratum 1 time server is not all that interesting. It's interesting to set up, but after that it just sits there, you check every week or 3 to make sure it's still a stratum 1 and otherwise you forget about it.
The only reason I support a pi as the time server is because I don't like all my eggs in one basket. A pi + gps is a stratum 1 time server for around $100 all in. That makes it MUCH cheaper than any other standalone time server I've seen, and AFAIC any functionality it doesn't have doesn't matter to me.
A good time source is important for my work, otherwise I wouldn't bother. It was a neat project for the pi, and now that's sitting in a pile of other pi's doing similarly trivial stuff.
I'm probably going to switch to minnowboard for some of my little stuff, but none of this will be any sort of router for me. There's lots of good router hardware out there, and purpose-built router hardware kicks ass over non-router hardware.
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If pfsense ran on a RaspberryPi I'm sure it would get used to death by home users assuming it wasn't flakey and slow.
It will be slow. That's why we're not interested.
We have pfSense running on the BBB internally.
(If you've not noticed: http://store.netgate.com/BeagleBoneBlack.aspx)
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@gonzopancho:
It's not that interesting. We're looking at doing a GPS-disciplined clock (oscillator) as a lure for the Minnowboard Max.
As in a Thunderbolt equivalent? A Soekris with a clock-block? (http://www.febo.com/time-freq/ntp/soekris/) Or just a GPS tacked onto a Minnowboard?
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That's cool. :)
Steve
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@gonzopancho:
It's not that interesting. We're looking at doing a GPS-disciplined clock (oscillator) as a lure for the Minnowboard Max.
As in a Thunderbolt equivalent? A Soekris with a clock-block? (http://www.febo.com/time-freq/ntp/soekris/) Or just a GPS tacked onto a Minnowboard?
If you really care about NTP (or ntimed https://github.com/bsdphk/Ntimed) you know that the PPS output you could get off "just a GPS tacked onto a Minnowboard (I said 'Max', but whatever) is good, but not great. What I'm describing is a GPSDO
http://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/2297.pdfYes, a lot like a Trimble Thunderbolt. Way better than your Soekris with a Clock-block. (I've seen it all before, son.)
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@gonzopancho:
[If you really care about NTP (or ntimed https://github.com/bsdphk/Ntimed)
[/quote]I don't: as you said, it's not that interesting. GPS / PPS units these days make it easy enough to get all the precision, accuracy & stability you need for ntpd. ntimed may change that though, as will PTP.
What I'm describing is a GPSDO
Yes, a lot like a Trimble Thunderbolt.
Great, I look forward to taking a close look and comparing them, if your design makes it to production.
Way better than your Soekris with a Clock-block. (I've seen it all before, son.)
It's not my Soekris, but it was a cool exercise to read about. I'm glad you feel you have enough experience to pull it off; it's quite hard to do well.
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Yep, have to admire that level of hackery. :)
Steve
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I'm glad you feel you have enough experience to pull it off; it's quite hard to do well.
One of the guys here has a father who used to work for Spectracom. Lives in-town. :-)
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@gonzopancho:
We have pfSense running on the BBB internally.
(If you've not noticed: http://store.netgate.com/BeagleBoneBlack.aspx)That is very interesting. I've been hoping to find something like that (I'm intrigued by the ODROID) to be a travel router that can OpenVPN back to my home pfsense.
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I heard today that they will be releasing a version of pfsense in the next few days that will be compatible with the RaspberryPi and other arm devices.
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I heard today that they will be releasing a version of pfsense in the next few days that will be compatible with the RaspberryPi and other arm devices.
Good. Hoping to max out my USB Gbit dongle… The alphas were not really stable above 500Mbps... plus some strange smoke around the box. :o
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I heard today that they will be releasing a version of pfsense in the next few days that will be compatible with the RaspberryPi and other arm devices.
Good. Hoping to max out my USB Gbit dongle… The alphas were not really stable above 500Mbps... plus some strange smoke around the box. :o
"Next few days" apparently kejiashi knows more than I do about the engineering schedule.
I don't think I own an rPI. I own several hundred BBB. Take from that what you will.
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Since its no longer April 1st, I need to recant my former BS post about pfsense supporting ARM - haha.
Maybe in a decade (-:
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Despite reading fake news stories all day yesterday I confess you totally got me with this. ::)
Steve
