DIY router with already bought hardware
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Hi guys I just purchased an h81i-plus, Pentium g3285 and 8 GB ram for a FreeNAS machine, but after some advice, I decided to buy a better suit hardware to my FreeNAS machine with ECC and hookers,
but I do have now a real nice hardware at hands that I could just sell it and lose some money or transform it to a router,
my router is already on its end of the lifespan , I know that this CPU would be too overkill, and it will consume a lot more power than a router, but it looks better than sell it,
my actual router is a wdr4300, and it's already my third router with OpenWRT, my questions are,
pfsense is a good choice for this? ,
H81i-plus just have one LAN card and one pcix16, so how is the best option to connect to my FreeNAS machine? (I may buy a switch, for this one, I do have an IPTV at home too)
Which wifi card do you guys would recommend me?
it's any wifi card that would be able to do 2,4 and 5 GHz?
any advice?
regardless I do ask sorry for any grammar mistake as I am not a native speaker, and I do ask sorry if this information is at any place, it's hard to find information about this matter
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I'd add a good PCIe Intel Ethernet card, or more if you want to split things up and a switch to share each card if you need more than one device. You can also get multi-port Ethernet cards for a good price, two to four ports, off ebay or the like.
For WiFi you really do not want an internal card, too much aggravation, instead grab something like a Ubiquity access point and use that for your WiFi. Ubiquity has a good selection based on your needs, I'm happy with my AC Lite unit.
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thank you for your reply, I did not know that we had a multi-port ethernet card, but I would like to control wifi by a computer , this ubiquity access look like a standard router or not? , but thank you for answering me .
i just saw here that a router and access point are different , so I like the idea :p …
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Ubiquity makes routers and switches as well but what I was recommending was their access point products.
https://store.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ac-lite.html
https://store.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ac-pro.html
Using an internal card you will be limited to one that is on the hardware compatibility list and it will only operate within the limits shown there. A full featured external AP is a far better option.
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Hi guys I just purchased an h81i-plus, Pentium g3285 and 8 GB ram for a FreeNAS machine, but after some advice, I decided to buy a better suit hardware to my FreeNAS machine with ECC and hookers,
but I do have now a real nice hardware at hands that I could just sell it and lose some money or transform it to a router,
my router is already on its end of the lifespan , I know that this CPU would be too overkill, and it will consume a lot more power than a router, but it looks better than sell it,
my actual router is a wdr4300, and it's already my third router with OpenWRT, my questions are,
pfsense is a good choice for this? ,
H81i-plus just have one LAN card and one pcix16, so how is the best option to connect to my FreeNAS machine? (I may buy a switch, for this one, I do have an IPTV at home too)
Which wifi card do you guys would recommend me?
it's any wifi card that would be able to do 2,4 and 5 GHz?
any advice?
regardless I do ask sorry for any grammar mistake as I am not a native speaker, and I do ask sorry if this information is at any place, it's hard to find information about this matter
I would think of your new hardware not as overkill, but as headroom.
Pfsense can be configured as anything from a simple no frills router, up to a full fledged UTM type device providing deep security and a wide range of services.
Naturally, the resources to power that activity scale up as well.
Concur with stan re wifi.
If you do on board, you take on the limitations of whatever the upstream FreeBSD sources provide, and no use case for that springs to mind.
I use Cisco AP's myself, as we were already using them at work when I took us off the Cisco routing path and moved to pfsense.
If you haven't purchased a switch yet- you may want to consider the Cisco 300 small biz series.
They cost a bit more than I would like, and rarely hit the used market at much under retail, but they are a supported switch for PacketFence should you choose to go that route.
Quad port nics are widely available on the secondary market for less than you'd pay for a new single port.
You can do everything with a single nic and vlans, but it can make your brain hurt at times.
3G/4G is another story - if you have a need for out of band remote management, on board can be a good option, as the external devices aren't all that great - but you need to check the HCL carefully.
