PfSense NewEgg Wish List - Low Power & Low Cost

treehuggergeorge

Hello :)

I recently started service on two cable modems (one work pays for). They are both provisioned for 16/2 (Comcast). I would like to build the below system. What do y'all think?

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=12921847

Here are my thoughts…

The two gig nics on the mb, will be for the two modems.

The two pci gig nics will be for one wireless n access point and one switch with another wireless n access point.

I will not have DMZ or server, so no additional nics will be required.

The first n access point will be open. I would like to leave open and use the pfsense portal for controlling access. This route, would allow my family and friends to visit with out having to add their mac etc into pfsense. They would only have to enter a predefined user name and password. Is this a good idea? Thoughts?

The second n access point will be connected to a switch to the second gig pci nic. This access point will use wpa2, hidden ssid and allow only authorized mac ids. This will be used for my occasional bedtime or primetime laptop browsing :)

The rest of my network will be connected through CAT5.

A few last minute questions....

1. Does pfsense have a monthly bandwidth calculator? Comcast starts their caps Oct 1.

2. Are there addons for pfsense to make a utm? Such as AV/antispam/antispy/malware?

3. Is there a way to setup a proxy? So I can use foxyproxy + ff3 to connect to my home isp to get around silly websense?

If none of this works or you have a better suggestion, please let me know!

Thanks in advance for any assistance or direction given!

Have a good day!

George

treehuggergeorge@gmail.com

P.S. - I added a poll, just in case you had a yes buy opinion or no buy opinion and did not wish to post...

treehuggergeorge

No thoughts, opinions or suggestions ?

YeOldeStonecat

Comcasts monthly bandwidth caps is a whopping 250 gigs. That's massively generous. For monitoring, there is an add-on I run on my PFSense box, called "BandwidthD". An easy to install plugin. Here's what it looks like…
http://bandwidthd.sourceforge.net/
You can install it right from your Packages link

I've never heard of any UTM features for PFSense. Untangle is the newest UTM kid on the block, an incredible package, I've setup quite a few of those boxes. But I run PFSense at home running from an old Thinkpad T22 p3 laptop...due to its QoS/Traffic Shaping to help my online gaming...and IPSec VPN support. Soon as they add IPSec support to Untangle though..I'll probably go over to that.

Endian, and IPCop with the Copfilter add-on, are some other UTM distros you might peek at if UTM features are a need.

The above hardware you spec'd is way overkill for PFSense, but if you don't mind the noise, space taken up, electric bill, etc...hey, go for it.

treehuggergeorge

Thanks YeOldeStonecat!

I have researched Untangle some. From what I have seen, there is no dual WAN option. I did find Endian with dual WAN but out of both pfSense appears to have a larger following. So for OCD people like me or noobs like me, the support from people like yourself is great! Do you think there is any advantages running a UTM vs. a ipCop, Smoothwall, pfSense, etc?

Thanks again!