Working Specialist Platforms
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Hi guys,
pfSense seems to like my McAfee Enterprise Firewall S1104 (Full 2.2.2 x64 serial).No specific instructions are necessary, since it is basically a custom miniITX motherboard with Atom D410, 2 gigs of RAM and 4 Intel NICs, so just whack the USB stick in, select it in the BIOS boot menu and that's all.
The device has both VGA and serial port (RJ-45 Cisco-style) on the front panel so you can use either image variant. I've installed pfSense using the serial console and it worked just fine. The BIOS has a console redirection capability, which defaults to 9600 bps, so I'd recommend to change it to 115200 bps to match the BSD kernel setting.
Overall, the device works very well. NICs are labeled only by numbers 0 - 3 and use identical chips, so they can be assigned freely.
My device runs router/firewall, pfblockng, suricata, dhcp, ntp and a an IKEv2 VPN (rarely used, it's a backup in case our main VPN server goes down) and it can do around 100 Mbit/s throughput. More performance testing is yet to be done, but the CPU was definitely sweating.
It has a 500 gig SATA HDD so it can do proxy/caching, but I wouldn't have too high expectations here, since the Atom D410 isn't exactly a power house and without HW AES, it's almost useless for heavy SSL work like HTTPS decryption and filtering.But apart from that, it's pretty decent router/firewall with IPS, especially when you can get one cheap. I paid 2000 CZK (about $83) for an unused unit.
Regads,
Tomas//Update: The BSD driver for the Intel 82574L NICs supports the TCP Segmentation Offloading. After enabling the feature in pfSense and rebooting, there was an obvious drop in CPU load when heavy traffic was passing through. I'll get some numbers soon, but just from my current observations, enabling TSO on this hardware may be useful.
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//Update: The BSD driver for the Intel 82574L NICs supports the TCP Segmentation Offloading.
Where did you get that information from?
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From the FreeBSD em(4) man page:
The em driver provides support for PCI Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on
the Intel 82540, 82541ER, 82541PI, 82542, 82543, 82544, 82545, 82546,
82546EB, 82546GB, 82547, 82571, 81572, 82573, and 82574 Ethernet con-
troller chips. The driver supports Transmit/Receive checksum offload and
Jumbo Frames on all but 82542-based adapters. Furthermore it supports
TCP segmentation offload (TSO) on all adapters but those based on the
82543, 82544 and 82547 controller chips.The igb driver also supports those features for 82575 and 82576-based adapters. (igb(4) man page)
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I'd be also interested for the same features in the Broadcom chipset.
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I'd be also interested for the same features in the Broadcom chipset.
I'm pretty sure there are a number of different Broadcom drivers incorporated into FreeBSD. Your best bet would be to search the FreeBSD man pages for the driver used on your system (usually the letters of the interface; i.e. igb0 = interface 0 for the igb driver) and see what it says for features.
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@virgiliomi:
From the FreeBSD em(4) man page:
The em driver provides support for PCI Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on
the Intel 82540, 82541ER, 82541PI, 82542, 82543, 82544, 82545, 82546,
82546EB, 82546GB, 82547, 82571, 81572, 82573, and 82574 Ethernet con-
troller chips. The driver supports Transmit/Receive checksum offload and
Jumbo Frames on all but 82542-based adapters. Furthermore it supports
TCP segmentation offload (TSO) on all adapters but those based on the
82543, 82544 and 82547 controller chips.The igb driver also supports those features for 82575 and 82576-based adapters. (igb(4) man page)
Exactly. Checking specs never hurts.
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Hmmm. That description is not accurate in the man page.
Supermicro A1SRi-2758F has Intel i354 nics, and pfSense loads igb driver for them. But in the man page of igb, I only find that
The igb driver provides support for PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet adapters
based on the Intel 82575 and 82576 Ethernet controller chips. The driver
supports Transmit/Receive checksum offload and Jumbo Frames. Furthermore
it supports TCP segmentation offload (TSO) on all adapters.It only mentions 82575 and 82576 chips supporting TCP segmentation offload, not a word about i354…
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Hmmm. That description is not accurate in the man page.
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It only mentions 82575 and 82576 chips supporting TCP segmentation offload, not a word about i354...Later in the man page, under the Hardware section, it does mention the i350 and i354 Ethernet controllers are supported by the driver. However, as you mentioned, the man page does not mention that the i350/i354 support those other capabilities.
Since the i354 is integrated into the CPU as part of the C2000-series Atom SoC, there's not a lot of info about it. I looked through the C2000 datasheet (chapter 11 is dedicated to the Ethernet controller), but could find no info about offloading.
The i350, however, was sold as a separate Ethernet controller, and according to the Intel ARK, did support "Intelligent Offloading". Whether the FreeBSD driver will work with the i350 or not for offloading, that might be left to experimentation.
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This is getting off topic. The NIC drivers or even the NIC hardware are not a specialist platform. ;)
Can we take this discussion to a new thread please.Steve
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Riverbed Steelhead 250 PFSense 2.2.5 embedded em2 and em3 work (Primary and Aux Ports). The EM0 and EM1 (Wan and LAN) ports use a bypass feature that I have not been able to disable so they will not link but the other two work flawlessly. It has a 1.66Ghz Celeron M Sossamon processor and uses DDR2 ECC Memory. I was able to repurpose some old ECC DDR2 memory that I have had laying around to upgrade it to 2gb of ram from the default 1gb. The box came with a 2gb USB flash drive and a 120gb Sata Hard Drive. I took out the Sata Drive and installed it on the flash drive. The drive uses a standard PC USB Header that you would find on any standard PC motherboard. The Processor supports Speedstep and Core temp as well so you get the CPU temp in the dashboard. Let me know if any of you guys want any further info about this machine. I would also be interested if anyone has made any progress in getting the EM0 and EM1 ports to work.
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TippingPoint 330 also works well. Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 with 2gb ram (4 slots, stock is 2x PC2-6400 CL6 1GB) and stock 1gb cf (you'll need to upgrade size of CF or use the 2 onboard SATAv2 connectors) a (seems to be) 1gb MGMT port, and 8 1gb ports. Follow my thread below to get the 8 1gb ports working. The system seems very hackable, internal usb, vga, com, JTAG, and parallel ports. Not sure what the mPCI card is though. Above post, can you find out what kind of bios you have on that platform? Someone here if not me Im sure can mod it to work with the bypass ports.
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=112093.0
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Checkpoint U30 - 2Gig Celeron processor, 2Gig RAM, 40Gig 7200RPM SATA 3.5" Hard drive (Can add another, but little space available for 3.5" drive), 8 x Gigabit ports
Has LCD, but with 2.3.1, i cannot test LCDProc. I may try an older release with that plugin available.
Also has CF slot built onto MB, but no media present.No special instructions, i connected a serial port @ 9600 to view output using a standard cisco rollover, but had to use a USB keyboard to interact (could have been my console settings).
You may need to change the boot priority in the Bios to boot from USB first. (i initially did this so long ago i just can't remember!)
Once past BIOS screen, change serial connection to 115200 and use the memstick i386 image on USB Key and install just like a standard server/pc hardware.All ports align nicely, EM0 = INT, EM1 = Ext etc.
Hope it helps!
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IBM Proventia MX 4004 - 6 x 1G ports - only change in bios serial console speed to 115200 and change position of JP6 and JP7 connetor on the mainboard. This disable bypass on the pair of port. The JP6 and JP7 connectors is on the left of CF Card slot.
JP6: LAN BP (Bypass) Power-On default mode setting
1-2(default): A normal, LED ON 2-3: A bypass, LED OFF J43/J44 bypass
4-5(default): B normal, LED ON 5-6: B bypass, LED OFF J34/J35 bypass
JP7: BP(Bypass) Enable/Disable
1-2: BP A disable 2-3: BP A enable (default)
4-5: BP B disable 5-6: BP B enable (default) -
Fujitsu Futro S900 Thinclient, AMD 1.2 GHz/4GB/4GB mSATA/DVI/DP/2xser/4xUSB/LAN
Bought a few of these off Ebay, I installed the 4g 64bit nano image on the 4g mSata using Rufus and an mSata adapter that I had.
As the box has only a single NIC, I bought a left handed PCI riser card from China for £2 ish ( the Fujitsu ones are £10 -£20! ) and a low profile PCI Intel 82546 PRO/1000 MT Dual Port NIC.
That gives me 3 network ports and the ability to set up a DMZ.
The processor is an AMD G-T44R and doesn't seem to support PowerD, but the box is only pulling around 13w power anyway, so I didn't spend a lot of time on that.Installation of 2.3.4 was quick and easy and no problems experienced while in service over the last month, at home.
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Are there any special platforms for industrial LTE modems?
I have some running OpenWRT through LuCi:http://comset.com.au/4g-lte-modem-routers-c-65/3g4g4gx-wifi-router-with-sim-card-slot-cm685vw-p-268.html?zenid=3k4o8vt4tq1318v0fdcije31a4
Would be nice to run pfSense on such a device for IoT purposes.
