New setup help
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I'd say go with a separate switch. Others have reported some issues with using pfsense as a bridge.
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A bunch of nics that you bridge does not a switch make.
If you want wire speed for your "switch" then get a switch..
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Thank you both for your responses. I will go with having another switch.
It is better to have a managed one, or let pfsense decide. I don't really see myself needing multiple subnets for now, and if I do in the future, I would probably create another lan.
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What kind of budget do you have? 10ge switches are not cheap ;) You going fiber or copper for connections?
Cheapest option prob Mikrotik
https://mikrotik.com/product/crs309_1g_8s_inThat is a port - you just need to fill it with sfp+
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@jakehaas said in New setup help:
It is better to have a managed one, or let pfsense decide.
That depends on your needs. If you want VLANs, port mirroring and more, then you need a managed switch. If you just want to connect a bunch of devices then an unmanaged switch will do.
BTW, what do you mean by "let pfsence decide"?
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@JKnott said in New setup help:
BTW, what do you mean by "let pfsence decide"?
My take on that is they don't actually know how vlans work ;) If they did they really wouldn't be asking about an dumb switch if they want to do vlans.
But I have seen a 10ge dumb switch.. Its not really any cheaper than a managed 1, so not sure why anyone would buy it ;) Problem with 10ge, is its not really priced for home use yet.. Except for those that have money to throw at it.. I would love to have the ability to do 10ge... When my current switches are eol in a few years, I will most definitely be in the market for ability to do 10ge on their replacements.
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I have to wonder what people would do with that. I can understand 10 Gb in a data centre or carrier. Some have already started running 100 Gb. But what benefit would a typical home users get? I recently upgraded my Internet to 500 Mb down and 20 up. I really don't see much of a difference in my usage. I suspect for some, even 10 Mb would be adequate. The other day a friend mentioned my upload is about 3x his download.
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@JKnott 10 Gbit is useful for large amounts of data, like a SAN/storage or for backups on the LAN to not take several hours each. That's our primary usage, outside of a server using 10 Gbit to one port on a a 1 Gbit switch. As discussed though the advantage would be LAN traffic and irrelevant to Internet traffic until the connection gets over 1 Gbps.
Side note: some Netgate routers have a switch built in, but it's a hardware switch.
Another aside and you'll probably laugh...we have a lab and it has old cabling so is 100 Mbps because it still works and we don't do anything on it other than Internet/downloading patches. Found out recent Supermicro server boards with Intel NICs can't do 100 Mbps, only 1 and 10. Time to upgrade...
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@teamits said in New setup help:
@JKnott 10 Gbit is useful for large amounts of data, like a SAN/storage or for backups on the LAN to not take several hours each.
Yes, I know. That's why I mentioned data centres and carriers. Not so much for home use, though I suppose you could read your email faster.
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@JKnott I was trying to agree with you... :)
