Zotac ZBOX CI323 nano
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Yes, the Dell DW1707 wireless card works (paid $5.00 on ebay). I have since got a second identical unit that is ready to be put into production.
I have also got this Zbox with pfsense 2.3.2 talking to a Tomato Shibby router via OpenVPN with shared key – both bridged and routed -- using the cookbook recipes. Thanks for the overall good documentation!
Hard to beat the specs on Zotac CI323 nano for the price, even after adding 8GB memory, new wi-fi card, and 120GB SSD. My only wish would be that it used Intel instead of Realtek eth.
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Has anyone having some issues with controller timeout ?
With an SSD I can't even install pfSense (installing Ubuntu and Windows 10 was fine), but changing to a normal HDD, the controller timeout still occurs, although i have successfully installed pfSense.
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Yes, I see SDHCI controller timeout ~15 times at boot time. Beyond the annoyance of a longish boot time, I have not noticed anything else. There was an opnsense forum thread that said this occurs because there is no SD card in the slot, I have not verified it.
I just upgraded a Zotac box with Dell DW1707 wireless card to 2.4, and the wireless interface is no longer being recognized. Have to dig deeper why it worked find in 2.3.2 but not in 2.4. Anyone else see this behavior?
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So why are people still buying this for pfSense when the realtek nics clearly has problems? I mean stable nics are like the most important thing here.
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I think you misread my post – The realtek NICs in Zotac may have problems but do work out of the box for ETH LAN and WAN connectivity.
The Dell DW1707 is a wireless card based on Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565, which works fine in pfSense 2.3. This card is not being recognized by 2.4 so far. Not sure if this is my problem or a bug.
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I am thinking of getting this box to replace my aging watchguard. Since this board has an m.2 slot, I'm wondering if anyone has tried to hook up an m.2 ssd?
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I am thinking of getting this box to replace my aging watchguard. Since this board has an m.2 slot, I'm wondering if anyone has tried to hook up an m.2 ssd?
Well i have been having nothing but troubles with the realtek nics, see my post in general help.. under load they crash at random times.. no WAN IP.. have to reboot.
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I wanted to relay my experience and findings in this thread. I am running pfSense on the Zotac ZBOX without issues. The nics are realtek, and I am not seeing any issues or unreliability and push them both well above 400mbps for extended periods.
That being said, I did go the route of installing ESX 6 and injecting the realtek driver into the image, etc. but that did not work out well at all. It worked, but the network throughput was very poor and there was no logical explanation for it. The switch ports showed a 1GB full duplex connection, ESX showed it was 1000mbps full, and pfSense reported the same, but throughput just wasn't there. I ran like this a while because the problem was not very impacting because I was on a 60mbps internet plan. I did notice issues on my internal net, like my HD video cameras were getting 2 to 5 frames per second – they are all hardwired, not wireless. .
But when I upgraded the internet plan to 200mbps, the issue was obvious and impacting. On average I got 75mbps, but it peaked to 130 and dropped to under 30 at times.
After de-virtualizing the pfSense by removing ESX, installing pfSense from the latest install image, and restored by configuration that I saved. Following that, I get 200mbps consistently and all my networked cameras are at 8-10 fps.
I did a lot of diagnostics and tinkering, trying to get the ESX 6 & pfSense combination to work, but came to the conclusion that there is a reason the N3150 and/or the realtek drivers are not certified by vmWare, and this is probably why.
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I wanted to relay my experience and findings in this thread. I am running pfSense on the Zotac ZBOX without issues. The nics are realtek, and I am not seeing any issues or unreliability and push them both well above 400mbps for extended periods.
So did you disable hardware offloading? Am thinking of getting the CI323 as a router on a 500/500 fiber connection.
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After a few weeks of trying to fix it i think i finally have my zotac box stable, no "watchdog timeout" and loss of WAN IP under heavy load in about 4 days. Longest run ever.
Need to test for a longer period of time for stability , but what i did was compile the latest realtek freeBSD drive (1.92) and load it on start up using kldload. Seems ok for now.
Before all this NOTHING was working stable. Always crashed on the WAN ip (watchdog timeout) no matter what interface it was assigned to (re0 - re1)
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After a few weeks of trying to fix it i think i finally have my zotac box stable, no "watchdog timeout" and loss of WAN IP under heavy load in about 4 days. Longest run ever.
Hi Doboy,
Could you describe this issue more to me? I'm not sure i understand, how would one know if connection is dropping out? I haven't experienced anything like this. However i do experience a weird issue sometimes where network traffic would come to a halt for couple of seconds, the WAN doesn't seem to be dropping. I think this issue started appearing after i installed pfblocker and added some lists, i'm also running av scan on traffic through squid on 850 evo SSD. Without these packages i haven't had these issues.
Can you tell me how to check for this watchdog timeout dropout issue and how you compiled a new driver etc. Thanks.
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Have you guys updated the BIOS yet?
https://www.zotac.com/us/files/download/by_product?p_nid=501278&driver_type=238&os=All
I don't understand the latest changes.
Can anyone try to to explain?
Version 2K161012
- Changed memory slot power (when AC Power attached)
- Fixed ME / TXE disabled (when Deep Sleep S5 enabled)
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You would see the "watchdog timeout" error on your console for the pfsense, for me i got those repeated errors as well as a dropped WAN Interface ( no ip) only thing to bring it back was a hardware reboot.
Hard setting my WAN to 100Mbps(my WAN was 120Mbps) causes less errors but still happened almost daily if I pushed too much traffic through the WAN interface.
if you search " watchdog timeout" + zotac CI323 on google you will see plenty of threads on it.
So far I'm past 5 days with no errors since i compiled latest driver
Have you guys updated the BIOS yet?
https://www.zotac.com/us/files/download/by_product?p_nid=501278&driver_type=238&os=All
I don't understand the latest changes.
Can anyone try to to explain?
Version 2K161012
- Changed memory slot power (when AC Power attached)
- Fixed ME / TXE disabled (when Deep Sleep S5 enabled)
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Yes I updated the BIOS no changes for me as far as performance or stability
Have you guys updated the BIOS yet?
https://www.zotac.com/us/files/download/by_product?p_nid=501278&driver_type=238&os=All
I don't understand the latest changes.
Can anyone try to to explain?
Version 2K161012
- Changed memory slot power (when AC Power attached)
- Fixed ME / TXE disabled (when Deep Sleep S5 enabled)
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Thanks Doboy for making that clear.
I'm not having any problems like that. My WAN is only 10mbit not enough to push it hard. However i might be switching over to Docsis 3.0 cable which would put me just above 100mbit maybe then i will start experiencing same problems. Can you tell me how you compiled the new driver for it? Is there a guide for it? Thanks.
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I compiled the driver using a VM with freeBSD 10.3 on it, then copied over the .ko file to the pfsense box and load it at startup in the the boot.loader
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Is there any way you could post the compiled .ko file and explain the procedure for adding it to the boot? I have the same problem only on LAN (RE0) if I run our IP security cameras it overloads it, I have to disconnect them to keep the LAN running more then a few minutes.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!
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Yeah sure soon as I get back home and have the PC up and running.
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Yeah sure soon as I get back home and have the PC up and running.
Thank you, that would be awesome! So I assume you got it working as well?
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Just ordered one of these with 4GB Crucial RAM and a Sandisk 120GB SSD. Should get it all Sunday