Pfsense on T5570 thin client

Finos

Hello every one , its my first post here .
im trying to make a cheap pfsense box to run in my home .
my goal is to make them as silent as possibe ,
i found the t5570 at around 20 €
with one ethernet plug i was about to do the vlan trick . but im not sure if the chipset is compatibe ( BCM57780 )

what do u advice me to do ?

thanks in advance !

DaddyGo

@Finos said in Pfsense on T5570 thin client:

but im not sure if the chipset is compatibe ( BCM57780 )

Hi,

Well for that I don’t take poison into my mouth to get started this BCM57780....

Listen, I recommend these:

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.3R/hardware.html
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/29214/dell-optiplex-xe-with-broadcom-bcm5761-netxtreme-and-broadcom-bcm57780

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/netlink-bcm57780-driver.11444/

I think look at other hardware, though it's very cheap...?

Finos

well .. all the articles you linked me to had already strudied them ..furthermore they are old ,from 2010 to be precise , stating that in the future release of bsd, the nic will be suported

i could just pull the triger on the thin client but i dont want to get my hopes up only to have a spectacular failure

DaddyGo

@Finos said in Pfsense on T5570 thin client:

furthermore they are old ,from 2010 to be precise

Well, that's authoritative...

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.3R/hardware.html

since pfSense 2.4.5-p1 is 11.3-stable, so if you can't find the driver here, I don't think it will work!

unless you compile one of from the "kernel" for this NIC
Good luck

stephenw10

Yeah that may not have been supported 10 years ago but there are plenty of posts showing that card attached correctly since then. For example:
https://forum.netgate.com/post/595326

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=bge&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+11.3-RELEASE

Steve

Finos

well ... the nic might be compatible .... the hole other system is ?
maybe i was going for low power , but this is TOO low . spec weise

Chipset | VIA VX900 Media System Processor north/south bridge unified chip
Processor | VIA Nano u3500 1 GHz
Flash memory: 2GB
RAM | 1GB DDR3 SODIMM (128MB reserved for video)

pfsense would propably push it to its limits ? right ?

stephenw10

I mean it could very easily but it depends entirely how much traffic you need through it.

If your WAN is 100Mbps it would work fine. Hard to put an actual number on it without testing.

Steve

Finos

my wan is 100mbit symetrical ,
planing to run 2 site to site vpns ( one for bridging 2 locations on one network)
and the other for Access to my freepbx voip telephony system . from 4g-connected cell phones .
planing to install pfblockerNG for adbolcking .

my local networks roughly consists of
3 servers (pbx , Storage server , unifi Controller (that one is a )
5 desktops + ip phones
up to 20 mobile devices on the wlan

for me at least this amount of trafic doesnt seem insignificant

stephenw10

You're probably going to want something more powerful than that then.

I doubt you will see more than 50Mbps OpenVPN throughput for example. Probably less.

The single thread rating of that CPU is similar to the original APU or Atom D525 except it's a single core CPU so it has to do everything. The D525 was good for ~50Mbps OpenVPN.
IPSec would be faster. Hard to tell be how much though. Test and see if you have the hardware already.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/VIA-Nano-U350-vs-AMD-G-T40E-vs-Intel-Atom-E3826-vs-Intel-Atom-D525/1491vs264vs2809vs611

Steve

Finos

well . my isp connected me yesterday , with andother plan saying that symetrical on my area is not possible . they gave me 50dn/5up on 1/4 the price (lose&win in the same time )

so , im diching the site to site vpn for now and shifting my focus on the voip system .
phone.com says that with one call going through the tunnel 5mbit is enough .

so we are back at the question . with the new data . will it now handle it or im out looking for a new solution ?

stephenw10

Yes, without the VPN there should be no problem.

I would not choose that system myself, it is relatively ancient! But if you have it already it will work fine for that.

Steve

Finos

well... i found it used for 20€ ... plus what ever switches etc i will need .
cheap setup , i just want to experiment in my house ,

the site to site tunnel ( me and a friend ) i think is canceled with the 5mbit upload . but i want the vpn tunnel for the voip . is this to heavy for the t5570 to handle well u could say "just grab it and test " but... i dont want buy a device that i would not use and have it siting around ...

stephenw10

I you have not bought it I would look for something newer. It would probably be fine for what youi have now but not if you get a faster WAN or want to run a bunch of packages etc.
Also that device is old, you have to think it might just stop working at any point.

Steve