Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Building pfsense box

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Hardware
    24 Posts 6 Posters 3.4k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • johnpozJ
      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @jimp
      last edited by

      @jimp said in Building pfsense box:

      We have another small box coming soon to take the place of the SG-1000. Details will be out very soon.

      Yeah a sub $200 box that could handle gig could be a game changer for sure.. More than 2 interfaces would be some yummy icing on that cake to boot ;)

      The only hardware that I know of that can do gig in say the $100 range would be the unifi stuff.. But its performance drops into the dirt as well if you turn on any feature that disables the hardware offload they are doing.. And their feature set and ease of management compared to pfsense is light years behind.. I have a USG sitting on my shelf because its was painful compared to pfsense.. But it was a stop gab for me while the sg4860 I wanted was back ordered after I had updated my isp from 100/10 to 500/50 and my current VM instance couldn't handle that speed.

      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
      SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

      V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • V
        VAMike @johnpoz
        last edited by

        @johnpoz you're basically describing an APU2 if you're not running PPPoE. BSD is a bit slower than linux, but the isr deferred stuff might improve that. So I wouldn't call it a "game changer".

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • johnpozJ
          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
          last edited by johnpoz

          @vamike said in Building pfsense box:

          APU2

          What is the price point? The older netgate units that are APU2 were over 300 and couldn't do gig I don't think, etc.

          What I mean from game changer point of view is the ability for netgate to sell a more home friendly priced box to compete with these diy and china boxes, etc. The sg1000 is ok, but it can not handle decent speeds and many power users that would want to run pfsense in the ifrst place prob have a higher end inet connection. But the next level box is in the 350$ which is high end of budget for many home users.

          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
          SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

          V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • J
            Johnnyk
            last edited by

            So i made down payment of $170 for Metronet fios, will be installed this coming tuesday. Once my bike is paid off, i will save for pfsense device, by then, new tech andnhope cheaper prices will be available.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • V
              VAMike @johnpoz
              last edited by

              @johnpoz netgate rebadged the pcengines apu1 and called it either APU2 or APU4 depending on the RAM size. It's been confusing people ever since the pcengines apu2 was released. (Completely different CPU, NIC, etc.) The pcengines apu2 runs about $150 (they're actually cheaper than the apu1, lower component costs).

              johnpozJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • J
                Johnnyk
                last edited by

                Okay guys this one really slipped me I am not getting one gigabyte per second with fiber optics I just double-checked it is 1 gigabit equaling 125 megabytes per second. So this changes the game.

                J 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • stephenw10S
                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                  last edited by

                  Not really. We all assumed 1Gbps because 1GBps would be 8Gbps which is very unlikely. Impossible on FiOS I would say.

                  Everything above is still true.

                  Steve

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • J
                    Johnnyk @Johnnyk
                    last edited by Johnnyk

                    @stephenw10 said in Building pfsense box:

                    Not really. We all assumed 1Gbps because 1GBps would be 8Gbps which is very unlikely. Impossible on FiOS I would say.

                    Everything above is still true.

                    Steve

                    I have a question why is internal Network most new routers are 1000 megabyte per second equaling 1 GB per second? Right I think that's right. I thought fiber optics could deliver much more than one gigabyte per second and I thought one gigabyte per second was standard for residential.

                    V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • stephenw10S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by stephenw10

                      Well here in the UK I'm stuck at 80Mbps so.... ๐Ÿ˜‰

                      But, no, some ISPs seem to be starting to offer >1Gbps but most are not. There are a few threads here about 1.5Gbps connections. But for residential internet 1Gbps is about all you can expect right now.

                      The fibre itself may be able to carry more but that doesn't mean the isp infratructure can.

                      And most SOHO routers are Gigabit internally, that's 1Gbps.

                      Steve

                      J 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • V
                        VAMike @Johnnyk
                        last edited by VAMike

                        @johnnyk nobody is delivering residential gigabyte service. Confusion is rampant. I avoid this by trying to use Gbit and Gbyte rather than "Gb" or "GB" and hoping people know what those mean.

                        To get gigabyte per second performance you'd need 10 gigabit per second networking. Most new routers do not do that.

                        Networking speeds are generally measured in bits (because they're descended from telecoms where a bit is a thing), other computer speeds like disks and memory are measured in bytes (because most basic computer operations don't involve less than a byte).

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • J
                          Johnnyk @stephenw10
                          last edited by

                          @stephenw10 said in Building pfsense box:

                          Well here in the UK I'm stuck at 80Mbps so.... ๐Ÿ˜‰

                          But, no, some ISPs seem to be starting to offer >1Gbps but most are not. There are a few threads here about 1.5Gbps connections. But for residential internet 1Gbps is about all you can expect right now.

                          The fibre itself may be able to carry more but that doesn't mean the isp infratructure can.

                          And most SOHO routers are Gigabit internally, that's 1Gbps.

                          Steve

                          Yup, I just checked with HWINFO app, and it does indeed say 1000Mbps adapter, now I see. All this time I had it wrong.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • J
                            Johnnyk
                            last edited by

                            So yea, I am maxing my network adapter with this FIOS@125MB/s.
                            Yea, I understand Kb/KB/Mb/MB/Gb/GB, I adapted to using MB vs Mbps.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • stephenw10S
                              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                              last edited by

                              Yes, it's a very common mistake. So common in fact that I just assumed you meant bits. I apologise.

                              Anyway be happy you have access to 1Gbps while I wait for another download to complete! โ˜บ

                              Steve

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                              • johnpozJ
                                johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @VAMike
                                last edited by

                                @vamike said in Building pfsense box:

                                The pcengines apu2 runs about $150

                                And it can push gig internet?

                                An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                                V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • V
                                  VAMike @johnpoz
                                  last edited by

                                  @johnpoz it can push gigabit all day long under linux+iptables. last I looked it was a little slower with pf (800 something Mbps) but as I said above it may be better with the isr deferred config. it cannot do gigabit pppoe, and openvpn speeds are somewhere around 50-100Mbps.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • First post
                                    Last post
                                  Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.