UK box for home user?
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Thanks: I had forgotten about the LinITX boards. What I cannot get my head around is how to assess what the hardware will handle. Is there an idiot's guide that will help me to work this out?
@marjohn56:
And of course the:
https://linitx.com/product/pc-engines-apu2-c4-system-board-with-4gb-ram/14822
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Really depends on what you intend to do with it. How many users, what packages you might use and what your wan connection speed is. If.you only have 2 users and an adsl connection then an i7 would be an overkill, conversely I think the apu2c4 might struggle with 30 users and and a 300Mbps link.
I run mine for 2 users, there are probably 30+ devices on a vdsl 80Mbps link with pfblocker and.multiple wan IP, works perfectly and I've never seen my CPU load above 10%, that would be me downloading one thing whilst upping another.
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WAN is 2 x VDSL @ ~50mbbps each (1: TalkTalk Biz and 2: Zen)
If I'm out of the Linitx realm, what would you guess is the next step up? An i3 quad core or something? It seems the costs go up exponentially as soon as you away from the celeron options -
WAN is 2 x VDSL @ ~50mbbps each (1: TalkTalk Biz and 2: Zen)
If I'm out of the Linitx realm, what would you guess is the next step up? An i3 quad core or something? It seems the costs go up exponentially as soon as you away from the celeron optionsGo to EBay, you will find a i3 mini tower for below £150. Get a Intel based dual NIC. That's it cheaper than building.
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WAN is 2 x VDSL @ ~50mbbps each (1: TalkTalk Biz and 2: Zen)
If I'm out of the Linitx realm, what would you guess is the next step up? An i3 quad core or something? It seems the costs go up exponentially as soon as you away from the celeron optionsGo to EBay, you will find a i3 mini tower for below £150. Get a Intel based dual NIC. That's it cheaper than building.
And ten times the size and many times the energy consumption. Apu2c4 with a 30Gb SSD would cope fine with that
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Cost and size yes. But at least the OP will not limit themselves if their Internet speed increased.
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a modern i3 will pull <20W from the wall with that setup.
an apu2 will pull maybe 7-10w.
either one will do 2x50Mbps WAN just fine.
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Like others have said, almost anything reasonably modern will be good for 100Mbps firewall/NAT.
What starts to be an issue is if you need to be able to fill that with VPN or run havy packages such as Snort or Squid. Even so you will be fine with relatively low end hardware. Unfortunately 100Mbps is pretty much what we're stuck with in UK unless you cough up a huge amount for FTTP. ::)
Steve
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I definitely want to run squid (and possibly other packages that I am unaware of!) and there are 2 home workers who may well be on vpn all day, with others who may be vpn'ing in at weekends and evenings.
So: what is the next step up from the LinITX box? I don't want to run second hand gear for this customer. Would prefer it to be rackable.
(I need to find a league table of current cpu's, as I have no clue how Atoms, Celerons, AMDs etc stack up against each other - if anyone knows of one please point me)
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As far as how much CPU you need, a Modern SoC Celeron will do 2x50Mbps WAN, with full time VPN and other packages.
J3355 or J3455 are the latest and greatest and are available in the UK.
You can get a J3355B-ITX SoC with a PCIe slot that will fit an i340-t4.
You'll need a microATX sized J3455 for PCIe slot to fit a multi-port NIC.
So as a baseline those CPUs will work for your needs of VPN, Squid and "other unknown packages", if you want to run an IDS/IPS @ 100Mbps and a VPN concurrently you'll need the J3455 and you'll need to use suricata, not snort for best performance. If you decide on something different keep in mind that modern matters. So don't think that looking back 5 years at a Celeron that has higher clocks/cores is comparable to it's modern day replacement.
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Sorry - SoC? Soldered-on-chip?
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System on Chip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip
Its got everything built in (CPU + motherboard). In this case and most (if not all) SoC's are non-socketed and passively cooled.
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WAN is 2 x VDSL @ ~50mbbps each (1: TalkTalk Biz and 2: Zen)
- APU2C4 ~250 Euro
- Jetway NF9HG-2930 ~350 Euro
pfSense SG-2440 units:
UK direct:
SG-2440 on Amazon.co.uk
SG-2440 on Amicatech.co.uk
DE direct:
SG-2440 on Voleatech.de
FR direct:
SG-2440 on Viatitude.frSo you will see, you might be able to buy that SG-2440 as an example directly in the UK or from Germany or France directly, there
will be no one pressing you to order in the USA. -
Seems the Related Searches seems to throw some Fruitful Products up also.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Computers-Accessories/Barebone-Industrial-Computer-Qotom-310G4-Celeron-Processor-Broadwell/B01JZ2A8LO/ref=pd_sbs_147_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=BFG7CHTFBGV8HKTQPAPN
£105
Seems decent.
For me, i just built mine on an AMD APU-5000 inbuilt onto an ITX Motherboard, Threw in a Dual Port NIC i was laughing, cost me pennies for the pleasure.
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Hi
I'm running an APU2C4 on a 300mbps link. I'm running Snort, Squid, Squidguard and lightsquid.
There's often 3 of us watching Netflix or Amazon or streaming some other media - including 4k, or a mix of that and online gaming.
The only time it struggled was with AV turned on, otherwise it's normally running fine without stressing the CPU or memory. It's such a tiny box, it's easy to keep out of the way, does get warm though :)
