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    Choosing hardware based on throughput performance

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    • JailerJ
      Jailer
      last edited by

      @nikkon:

      Ideally 2 more for a nas lagg  :P

      http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SRM-LN7F-2758.cfm

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      • N
        nikkon
        last edited by

        anyone has any clue how many pps can handle this kinda of setup? the one i asked for (c2758 based)
        I was just reading some reviews for Vyos and miktorik and they look impresive.

        pfsense 2.3.4 on Supermicro A1SRi-2758F + 8GB ECC + SSD

        Happy PfSense user :)

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        • ?
          Guest
          last edited by

          I was just reading some reviews for Vyos and miktorik

          Ok for sure this might be a total other thing to go with different OS!
          If this both named OS are doing the usage of multicore instead of the single Core usage
          by going  to use pppoe, this would be really able to see  an impressive goal or number of pps.

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          • N
            nikkon
            last edited by

            I know Pfsense uses only 1 core for PPPoE…. For now I hope.
            Waiting for a testfix in the near future.

            pfsense 2.3.4 on Supermicro A1SRi-2758F + 8GB ECC + SSD

            Happy PfSense user :)

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            • Z
              zax123
              last edited by

              I'm in the same boat.

              I need a rig that can run 1gigabit fiber without choking.  I currently have an AMD G-T40E and it tops out at about 350mbps.

              Pricing out the Supermicro with memory and a case and an SSD comes to something like $500 US.  Am I the only one who thinks that's a lot of money for a router?

              Is there no cheaper way to do it and still take advantage of 1gigabit WAN?

              I also run 3 IPSEC VPN tunnels…

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              • ?
                Guest
                last edited by

                I'm in the same boat.

                Likes many peoples

                I need a rig that can run 1gigabit fiber without choking.

                There are so many out of them that we can´t really count and name them here all, but for sure a
                bunch of should be placed for you here.

                I currently have an AMD G-T40E and it tops out at about 350mbps.

                Hmm, just curious we got something around till ~550 MBit/s and ~650 MBit/s - ~750 MBit/s
                with enabled PowerD (Hi adaptive. Sometimes and surely pending on the configuration it might
                be good to set up a higher mbuf size. (measured with iPerf from PC (on the WAN Port) to PC (on the LAN Port)

                Pricing out the Supermicro with memory and a case and an SSD comes to something
                like $500 US.  Am I the only one who thinks that's a lot of money for a router?

                Not really alone, but if you need only a capable routing device you might be better going
                with a dedicated router software likes OpenWRT or DD-WRT, pfSense is a fully featured
                software firewall that can be turned with ease to a full UTM device!!! It depends on what
                services you might be offering to your network and how many packets you will be installing
                and on top how many functions and options given by pfSense will be turned on.

                I also run 3 IPSEC VPN tunnels…

                This is to less input I think.
                Offered services, activated functions, turned on options, used features, installed packets, number of
                rules, DMZ & LAN devices and switches, users, CP, Proxy, DPI, IDS/IPS and other things on top likes
                needed throughput on WAN, VPN and LAN or DMZ would be fine to know.

                Is there no cheaper way to do it and still take advantage of 1gigabit WAN?

                For sure it is and there is a really great amount of devices that could match your wish for sure!
                At first I want to tell you that the pfSense store is combining the best out of from both "worlds"
                the PC Engines APU boards 3 miniPCIe slots + 1 SIM slot and the Intel Atom C2x58 SoC mostly
                to find on the well known Supermicro boards. So the SG-2220 for $299 would be matching also
                fine to the small told case of usage.

                Budget suggestion 1:
                pfSense SG-2220 & miniPCIe WIFi card & M.2 mSATA drive
                pfSense shop ready to go and with pre-installed pfSense
                ~$299 + add on cards if needed

                Budget suggestion 2:
                Intel Celeron G3260 @3,2GHz Mini-ITX Board
                Is capable to route 1 GBit/s at the WAN port and running snort for sure.

                • self made box ~$200 - $300

                Most common suggestion:
                Intel Celeron J1900 Quad Core CPU based boards often are able to turn the pfSense
                both into a real UTM with ease for ~$299 to ~$320 fully assembled and ready to go.

                • Jetway board based
                • Axiomtek
                  $299 - $599

                alternatively

                Intel Bay Trail Dual Core CPU @2,16 GHz with AES-NI
                Will be right sorted for a home appliance but very powerful

                • Axiomtek
                • Jetway boards based
                  $299 - $599
                  alternatively

                Intel Atom C2358, C2558 or C2758 from Dual Core @1,7GHz to Octa Core @2,4GHz
                with AES-NI and Intel QuickAssist
                pfSense shop as SG units ~$300 - $600
                Supermicro Boards from resellers or amazon ~$500
                Axiomtek appliances from resellers or directly from Axiomtek ~$600

                Really powerful appliances:
                Intel Atom C2758, Intel Xeon D-1540, Intel Xeon E3 or E5 based with AES-NI
                partial with Intel QuickAssist support.

                • Lanner appliances ~$400 - open end
                • Lannic appliances ~$400 - open end
                • Axiomtek appliances  ~$800 open end

                Axiomtek NA342 (J1900)
                Axiomtek NA342R (J1900)
                Axiomtek NA361 (C2558 or C2758)
                Axiomtek NA361R (C2558 or C2758)

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                • N
                  nikkon
                  last edited by

                  I have great expectations from the version 2.2.5 in terms of performance improvement and bigger from 3.x :)
                  C2758 + 8Gb RAM + SSD + PCI-X 4x intel Gigabit for WAN must be capable to route 1 GBit/s .

                  pfsense 2.3.4 on Supermicro A1SRi-2758F + 8GB ECC + SSD

                  Happy PfSense user :)

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                  • Z
                    zax123
                    last edited by

                    Wow, that was an EXTREMELY comprehensive reply.

                    Thank you!

                    I do make use of a lot of pfSense's features, so I don't want to lose pfSense.  I do IGMP proxy, VPN, lots of port mapping, I like debugging tools, etc…

                    From your list of suggestions, it looks like $500 is the sweet spot for a decent pfSense machine, so I guess I have to go with that.

                    Which SG unit from pfSense shop would be equivalent to the C2758 SuperMicro board which I will likely go with at the end of all this. :)

                    Thanks so much for the reply!

                    Rob

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                    • Z
                      zax123
                      last edited by

                      @BlueKobold:

                      I currently have an AMD G-T40E and it tops out at about 350mbps.

                      Hmm, just curious we got something around till ~550 MBit/s and ~650 MBit/s - ~750 MBit/s
                      with enabled PowerD (Hi adaptive. Sometimes and surely pending on the configuration it might
                      be good to set up a higher mbuf size. (measured with iPerf from PC (on the WAN Port) to PC (on the LAN Port)

                      Out of curiosity, how does one enable PowerD/Hi Adaptive in pfSense?

                      Thanks!

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                      • A
                        Aluminum
                        last edited by

                        Unless you are infatuated with having a tiny router, if you really want to leverage the most out of a lucky home with gigabit internet, grab one of the SMB "starter server" deals.

                        You can often find a couple models with cheap E3 xeons, I often see Lenovo TS140 and Dell T220 in the low $300s or less. Last week there was a killer one day deal for $280: 1225v3 @3.2ghz, 4GB ECC, 1TB HDD, free shipping.
                        Add a dual port intel 82571 nic for $20 off fleabay, quads not much more. (1000 pro pt, expi9402pt, x3939, nc360t are common variants of the duals)

                        Those two models for sure are actually quiet (seen a few in person) and relatively efficient for the performance they provide (can't cheat physics) there may be others models and vendor types that are similar.

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                        • Z
                          zax123
                          last edited by

                          @Aluminum:

                          Unless you are infatuated with having a tiny router, if you really want to leverage the most out of a lucky home with gigabit internet, grab one of the SMB "starter server" deals.

                          You can often find a couple models with cheap E3 xeons, I often see Lenovo TS140 and Dell T220 in the low $300s or less. Last week there was a killer one day deal for $280: 1225v3 @3.2ghz, 4GB ECC, 1TB HDD, free shipping.
                          Add a dual port intel 82571 nic for $20 off fleabay, quads not much more. (1000 pro pt, expi9402pt, x3939, nc360t are common variants of the duals)

                          Those two models for sure are actually quiet (seen a few in person) and relatively efficient for the performance they provide (can't cheat physics) there may be others models and vendor types that are similar.

                          Thank you for this.

                          I think this is the way I'm going to go.  I have a room with "servers" in it and one more won't hurt much.

                          I checked out the Dell website and doesn't look like the T220 exists anymore.  The lowest price T320 was $1200+, so I'm not sure how they get to $280.  Was that the Dell or the Lenovo?  Was it a used machine?

                          Thanks again for the suggestion!

                          Rob

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                          • A
                            Aluminum
                            last edited by

                            Sorry it was T20, this was the deal last week, expired:

                            http://slickdeals.net/f/8192191-dell-poweredge-t20-tower-server-xeon-e3-1225-v3-quad-4gb-ddr3-1tb-hdd-dvdrw-279-w-free-s-h-dell-back

                            Best deal I've seen so far, but with cyber week coming up I think there will be plenty of good buys soon.

                            Often much better than the consumer bloatware crap because no windows tax and nicer components: with the E3 12_5 models you get a C2_6 chipset motherboard with intel NIC and usually a full x16 from cpu along with x4 and/or x1 off the PCH for expansion. PSU might be slightly custom (lenovo uses different harness you can adapt) but tends to be a more efficient one too.

                            I believe HP has a similar model in this price class as well, makes sense as the big vendors all try to cover the SMB server niche.

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                            • Z
                              zax123
                              last edited by

                              That's awesome!  Now I know what to look for, thank you so much.

                              I'll wait till Black Friday and grab the best deal possible on a similar config.  I'd even be fine if there were no hard drive, I'm much rather an SSD anyway.  Hopefully those servers use SATA.

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                              • ?
                                Guest
                                last edited by

                                Out of curiosity, how does one enable PowerD/Hi Adaptive in pfSense?

                                System > Advanced > System Tunables > and then start/activate PowerD & reboot the pfSense box.
                                After doing this have a look in the Dashboard for the correct MHz/GHz entry will be there.
                                Do a iPerf test with one PC on the WAN interface and one on the LAN interface, thats it.

                                If you are using a mSATA drive that is capable of the TRIM support, I would also suggest to activate
                                TRIM support on your pfSense box.

                                • Do a full install on the SSD or mSATA
                                • reboot to the single user mode
                                • at the prompt type in| cd /sbin/ and then ./tunefs -t enable /
                                • ./reboot
                                • to verify that it is activated open a shell and type in| tunefs -p / and tunefs -p / var
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                                • D
                                  dopey
                                  last edited by

                                  Just to pipe in, I am quite happy with my A1SRi-2758F.

                                  With a few packages running, routing performance is still more than capable of hitting gigabit throughput.

                                  The biggest problem is the PPPoE issue.  For me, this is a residential connection - but I work from home and use alot of bandwidth, 700-750mbit/s is plenty.  So I'm pretty happy with it.

                                  But if you absolutely need the gig throughput and use PPPoE there are other choices that wlil probably work better, and even crazier, use less power.  Some of the low power i3/i5 CPUs are pretty capable, and may use more power at peak, but for the load that routing presents to them, they end up actually coming in at or lower than the rangeley.

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                                  • N
                                    nikkon
                                    last edited by

                                    Mobo is on the way…will be here in 2 weeks.
                                    In the mean time i found a gbit ethernet adaptor:
                                    DELL 0X3959 2 x 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI-E 4X REF
                                    Or
                                    Intel D33745-B PRO-1000 Single Port Gigabit Ethernet PCI-E U3867
                                    What do you think ? Will handle gigabit pppoe?

                                    pfsense 2.3.4 on Supermicro A1SRi-2758F + 8GB ECC + SSD

                                    Happy PfSense user :)

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                                    • Z
                                      zax123
                                      last edited by

                                      Thanks for chiming in @dopey,

                                      I'm pretty convinced that I'll go with a Dell T20 or a Lenovo TS140 E3 server.  I have lots of room in my "server room" and I really don't want to worry about getting something with not enough power.  And I find the Supermicro to just be too expensive.

                                      I'm hoping I'll get a T20 or TS140 with no HDD and I'll put a small (64gig or so) SSD on it.  I'm trying to never buy an HDD again. :)

                                      Thanks all!

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                                      • awebsterA
                                        awebster
                                        last edited by

                                        @zax123
                                        Beware the Lenovo TS140…its a great box, but you'll be pretty unhappy if you try to put an aftermarket SSD in it.
                                        It uses custom brackets and power cables, which you only get in the box if you buy a Lenovo branded drive.

                                        –A.

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                                        • Z
                                          zax123
                                          last edited by

                                          @awebster:

                                          @zax123
                                          Beware the Lenovo TS140…its a great box, but you'll be pretty unhappy if you try to put an aftermarket SSD in it.
                                          It uses custom brackets and power cables, which you only get in the box if you buy a Lenovo branded drive.

                                          Oh wow, thanks for letting me know.

                                          That means I'm back to looking only for a good deal on the T20.

                                          Much appreciated!

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                                          • D
                                            dopey
                                            last edited by

                                            @awebster:

                                            @zax123
                                            Beware the Lenovo TS140…its a great box, but you'll be pretty unhappy if you try to put an aftermarket SSD in it.
                                            It uses custom brackets and power cables, which you only get in the box if you buy a Lenovo branded drive.

                                            I have a ts140 and i had no problems installing a regular sata ssd and hdd in it.
                                            the power connectors were not custom.  yes, the brackets were weird, but i didn't have any problems gettng things to fit.

                                            for SSDs, keep in mind, yo're not dealing with moving parts.  Zip ties are your friend.

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