Atom C2758 vs Xeon D-1540

SumitB

I am in the process of getting a new router for my office. Currently we have 4 ADSL (PPPoE) lines for load balancing and in future we may add a 5th fibre line from another operator. The speeds are not anything to be written about but does do the job. We have 4 ADSL lines because our ISP does not have any option where the combined speed of 4 lines can be provided over 1 line. I do understand that pfSense has some limitations with multiple PPPoE lines but then we make use of the ADSL modem to overcome such limitations and this has been serving us well.

Currently, the hardware we use has been put together by assembling some old parts and now we want to upgrade to server grade components. However, unlike the west, its not too easy for us to order these parts online and we have to rely on authorised distributors to provide them to us. I had got a quote from one such Supermicro distributor in my country and the much loved A1SRM-LN7F-2758 can be made available to us. We were more or less going to go with this when suddenly someone mentioned the Xeon D-1540 SoC which is an obvious upgrade to the Atom. Considering that the fibre line will also enable us to link my office and my residence over LAN speeds and I plan, in the very near future, to setup a VPN between the two sites for file sharing and freenas backup, should I invest the extra money and get the Xeon D-1540 platform instead? On the residence connection too, we have 4 ADSL lines and will get the fibre once we have it installed at the office. For the Xeon platform, I am eyeing the X10SDV-TLN4F with an add on card with 4 Gigabit ports. RAM will probably be 16GB on the machine.

Your advice will be appreciated.

Guest

I do understand that pfSense has some limitations with multiple PPPoE lines but then we make use of the ADSL modem to overcome such limitations and this has been serving us well.

There are no limitations for the load balancing, this more tends to the PPPoE part.
But also not forever and with the right sorted CPU it might be also no problem.

What is the speed of all the ADSL lines?
10/100/1000 Mbit/s or 20,50 or 100 MBit/s

The Intel Atom C2758 is right good for many tasks, the D-1540 will be better and in Q1/2016 Supermicro
is selling an upgrade to this Intel Xeon D-1500 platform, likes the D-1518, D-1528 and D-1548 that will be
serving 4C/8T, 6C/12T, 8C/16T, 12C/24T and 16C/32T and the last one with 16C/32T will be on the market
for $958 (only the Board) but on DDR4-2133MHz ECC RAM, but one thing is the same as now. The PPPoE is
alos only single threaded running.

An adequate Intel Xeon E3-1285v3 or E3-1286v3 or Xeon E5-2600v3 with 6 till 10 cores at 3,0GHz would be
also matching and will be also allow you to run all services you need and will. Perhaps you might be waiting
until the new Board are out and on sale.

asterix

Go for the Xeon

SumitB

@BlueKobold:

I do understand that pfSense has some limitations with multiple PPPoE lines but then we make use of the ADSL modem to overcome such limitations and this has been serving us well.

There are no limitations for the load balancing, this more tends to the PPPoE part.
But also not forever and with the right sorted CPU it might be also no problem.

What is the speed of all the ADSL lines?
10/100/1000 Mbit/s or 20,50 or 100 MBit/s

The Intel Atom C2758 is right good for many tasks, the D-1540 will be better and in Q1/2016 Supermicro
is selling an upgrade to this Intel Xeon D-1500 platform, likes the D-1518, D-1528 and D-1548 that will be
serving 4C/8T, 6C/12T, 8C/16T, 12C/24T and 16C/32T and the last one with 16C/32T will be on the market
for $958 (only the Board) but on DDR4-2133MHz ECC RAM, but one thing is the same as now. The PPPoE is
alos only single threaded running.

An adequate Intel Xeon E3-1285v3 or E3-1286v3 or Xeon E5-2600v3 with 6 till 10 cores at 3,0GHz would be
also matching and will be also allow you to run all services you need and will. Perhaps you might be waiting
until the new Board are out and on sale.

I thought pfSense had limitations using more than 1 PPPoE lines if using them in load-balancing/failover mode if their gateway were common? Thank you for clarifying this.

The max speeds I get on each ADSL line is 8-16Mb. The fibre will give me 16Mb.

I will probably not use the fibre for internet access other than as a failover incase all the 4 ADSL lines go down. The main objective of getting the fibre will be to utilise the fact that they offer a private IP on each line and it is possible to use their network to connect 2 or more sites over ethernet. If I am not mistaken, they're currently offering local speeds of 1000Mbps. Down the line, I want to use this for connecting my office and residence over VPN for file sharing and remote monitoring.

So in this case, for my use, a D-1540 with 16GB ECC RAM is sufficient? The supermicro board comes with 2x10GbE and 2xGbE ports. I can use another add on card to get 4xGbE ports which takes care of my needs. The current setup too will have me stretch my budget for each site and I am sure the updated models will be more expensive.

Guest

I will probably not use the fibre for internet access other than as a failover incase all the 4 ADSL lines go down.

You should tell us more explicit and exactly what real ADLS lines this are!
Consumer or business lines?
With a static public IP address?

So if you have 2 x 8 MBit/s and 2 x 16 MBit/s and a 1 x 16 MBit/s you can use them for
a proper load balancing scenario. You can easily do a load balancing or a fail over set up
but also both together, looks like here in this forum thread! Please watch out the rules;
multi-wan [dual] and policy based routing with failover

So you will have the benefit from both scenarios and will be use all your ADSL lines together without
let one or more line unused.

The main objective of getting the fibre will be to utilise the fact that they offer a private IP on each line

Private IP from an internal Class C subnet or a static public IP address route able through the Internet
and for using it for something likes VPN ect.?

it is possible to use their network to connect 2 or more sites over ethernet. If I am not mistaken, they're currently offering local speeds of 1000Mbps. Down the line, I want to use this for connecting my office and residence over VPN for file sharing and remote monitoring.

For sure if this is a real static public IP address and not a private one only for internal usage
this would be running well then.

So in this case, for my use, a D-1540 with 16GB ECC RAM is sufficient?

You will be able to realize a full featured UTM device with this hardware for sure!
Using firewall, Snort, Squid & SquidGuard, ClamAV & HAVP, pfBlocker-NG and DPI tasks with are proper
throughput and speed. But once more again, please take a minute to think about! The new boards ending
with an eight (D-1518, D-1528 and D-1548) are all network accelerated and this might be a really gain for
you to use it together with pfSense now and in the future! They all came with support for the following;

AES-NI support
Will be used for speeding up VPNs together with AES-GCM up to 5x faster then without
Intel QuickAssist support
Will be speed up encryption and gaining up the throughput for decompression and compression
DPDK support (enabled software)
Speeds up Layer2 tasks and Layer3 routing much faster then without using the API from Intels DPDK

Your choice (D-1540) is here in Germany able to get for ~1031 € - 1194 €
2 x 10 GbE
2 x 1 GBit/s
8 C/8T
AES-NI only

The new boards ending with an eight are in the same price range likes yours, because Supermicro
was telling www.servethehome.com the price for a board at launch time are something around ~$958
and this is really nearly the same price range but you will get more for your money! And Q1/2016 is
not far away from now. Please thing about!

The supermicro board comes with 2x10GbE and 2xGbE ports. I can use another add on card to get 4xGbE ports which takes care of my needs.

For sure you will be able to do so! Take an Intel server grade quad port adapter and be happy with it.

The current setup too will have me stretch my budget for each site and I am sure the updated models will be more expensive.

No, I was thought before also likes you, but it isn´t so.
D-1540 board for ~1100 €
D-1528 X10SDV-6C+-TLN4F
They will be on launch at this time and mostly prices are not shown because they are not in stock now
until Q1/2016 likes shown here as an example:

SumitB

@BlueKobold:

I will probably not use the fibre for internet access other than as a failover incase all the 4 ADSL lines go down.

You should tell us more explicit and exactly what real ADLS lines this are!
Consumer or business lines?
With a static public IP address?

They're sold here as SOHO lines. I have the option of getting static IPs and on two of the four lines, I do have static IPs. The other two are on dynamic IPs and yes, these are public IP addresses.

So if you have 2 x 8 MBit/s and 2 x 16 MBit/s and a 1 x 16 MBit/s you can use them for
a proper load balancing scenario. You can easily do a load balancing or a fail over set up
but also both together, looks like here in this forum thread! Please watch out the rules;
multi-wan [dual] and policy based routing with failover

So you will have the benefit from both scenarios and will be use all your ADSL lines together without
let one or more line unused.

I am already planing to use them this way. Currently too, they're setup for both load balancing and failover.

The main objective of getting the fibre will be to utilise the fact that they offer a private IP on each line

Private IP from an internal Class C subnet or a static public IP address route able through the Internet
and for using it for something likes VPN ect.?

The fibre operator here is unlike the fibre operators elsewhere. They setup a city wide local area network utilising overhead wires. These are then connected to different households/offices and each connection is assigned a class C ip address. When I last checked, this particular operator had just one public IP. I have configured a few routers for friends who use this operator at their different offices to establish a non-vpn link. They're using this for remote monitoring. I have not done any tests on these links but I am assuming that they would at least be gigabit.

it is possible to use their network to connect 2 or more sites over ethernet. If I am not mistaken, they're currently offering local speeds of 1000Mbps. Down the line, I want to use this for connecting my office and residence over VPN for file sharing and remote monitoring.

For sure if this is a real static public IP address and not a private one only for internal usage
this would be running well then.

As explained above, the operator assigns Class C IP address to his clients. They're then routed to a captive portal at his end and are given access to the Internet. The operator only has 1 static public IP. I am not even looking at using this link for Internet access. At most, I will use this in case all of my 4 ADSL lines go down. My main objective is to use this link to establish an openVPN link between two sites which are connected using the same fibre line. Since they're assigned Class C IP addresses, can it be achieved?

So in this case, for my use, a D-1540 with 16GB ECC RAM is sufficient?

You will be able to realize a full featured UTM device with this hardware for sure!
Using firewall, Snort, Squid & SquidGuard, ClamAV & HAVP, pfBlocker-NG and DPI tasks with are proper
throughput and speed. But once more again, please take a minute to think about! The new boards ending
with an eight (D-1518, D-1528 and D-1548) are all network accelerated and this might be a really gain for
you to use it together with pfSense now and in the future! They all came with support for the following;

AES-NI support
Will be used for speeding up VPNs together with AES-GCM up to 5x faster then without

Intel QuickAssist support
Will be speed up encryption and gaining up the throughput for decompression and compression

DPDK support (enabled software)
Speeds up Layer2 tasks and Layer3 routing much faster then without using the API from Intels DPDK

Your choice (D-1540) is here in Germany able to get for ~1031 € - 1194 €
2 x 10 GbE
2 x 1 GBit/s
8 C/8T
AES-NI only

The new boards ending with an eight are in the same price range likes yours, because Supermicro
was telling www.servethehome.com the price for a board at launch time are something around ~$958
and this is really nearly the same price range but you will get more for your money! And Q1/2016 is
not far away from now. Please thing about!

The supermicro board comes with 2x10GbE and 2xGbE ports. I can use another add on card to get 4xGbE ports which takes care of my needs.

For sure you will be able to do so! Take an Intel server grade quad port adapter and be happy with it.

The current setup too will have me stretch my budget for each site and I am sure the updated models will be more expensive.

No, I was thought before also likes you, but it isn´t so.
D-1540 board for ~1100 €
D-1528 X10SDV-6C+-TLN4F
They will be on launch at this time and mostly prices are not shown because they are not in stock now
until Q1/2016 likes shown here as an example:

Thank you for this suggestion. I did look the 15x8 SoC up. I will go with these. You would suggest the 1528 over the 1548?

Edit: I just looked up Supermicro's D-1548 offering. They have nothing yet. In case I am ready to pull the trigger before they actually come up with something, should I just get the 1528? I don't think my Internet speeds will goto to even 100Mbps in the next 5 years. So my only concern is openVPN over the fibre line.

SumitB

Edit: I just looked up Supermicro's D-1548 offering. They have nothing yet. In case I am ready to pull the trigger before they actually come up with something, should I just get the 1528? I don't think my Internet speeds will goto to even 100Mbps in the next 5 years. So my only concern is openVPN over the fibre line.

Anyone?