Hardware advice

Lectrician · Jun 30, 2014, 5:38 AM

Looking to replace my aged desktop running pfsence 2.0.1.

Currently two 4M DSL lines go into a load balance router and then into the pfsence box. I run the box as a pub wifi server. The captive portal is in use, customised to log users name, email, postcode into a flat file database, sending emails out with each new user.

I also use the proxy server to log sites visited (can I limit proxy disk space and still log all sites?).

BT infinity is due to be available soon, and was planning on getting two 80/20 lines installed, and expect to achieve near to 70-80M.

What sort of hardware is best? Can I just get an I5 or I7 tower with plenty of RAM?

Thanks.

stephenw10 · Jun 30, 2014, 6:19 PM

Any reason you're not using pfSense to load balance the connections?

160/40 is not a particularly high throughput, you could handle that with an Atom. Adding Squid to the mix will increase that requirement but I would still expect a relatively recent Atom to handle it.
An i5 or i7 is probably overkill for this application unless you plan on adding, say, Snort or using VPNs extensively.

Steve

Lectrician · Jul 3, 2014, 6:15 AM

Thanks.

The router was in place to load balance before I went with pfsence, so it remained. There are a couple network connections in front of the pfsence box too, so it was just left as is.

I prefer a little overkill :-)