300MHz Geode okay for 20Mb+ internet connection?
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I see you can get some really cheap Geode 300MHz systems on eBay, and was just wondering if they would be okay for a 20Mb internet connection, or even 50/100Mb?
The boards have an on-board Realtek 10/100 NIC and a PCI slot for a second NIC. I know Realtek NICs are not highly rated. I would not be using VPN or any packages, just traffic shaping and running on a compact flash. Lots of open connections for P2P and some flat-out downloading from usenet.
The Hardware Sizing Guide suggests that it should be okay, but 50Mb will most likely be too much for it to handle. My current pfSense (PIII 600MHz) box handles 20 meg with 30,000 states and traffic shaping at about 5-10% CPU, using on-board Intel and PCI Realtek NICs which would suggest that it should easily handle 50Mb. I suppose if the Geode won't do 50/100Mb, as long as the PIII will it's okay. I have a 1.3GHz PIII if I need to upgrade.
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I use m0n0wall on an Alix 2C3 (500MHz Geode LX800) and when going at full-speed on my 24Mb connection at about 2.7 megabytes per second and 250kB/sec up, CPU usage with m0n0 is about 2 to 3%. I'd imagine that it would be able to support quite a bit more speed. My m0n0 does traffic shaping and firewalling on a CF card.
However, pfSense isn't as lean as m0n0, so perhaps it might be a little different, but I would imagine it would be mostly similar. The only reason I don't actually use pfSense is because at the time I set it up I happened to use a version which didn't support shaping and firewalling at the same time.
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Thanks, that's good to know.
I do wonder about the CPU numbers though. I read somewhere that they can be misleading because they don't include time spent in interrupts, which can be a lot with naff cards like the Realteks.
I guess for £20 I might as well just try it.
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see http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=49
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I think we should also put a little note in there that the NIC makes a huge difference on throughput. For example, I had a VIA C3 550Mhz and I couldn't push more than ~17Mbps because I was maxxing out the CPU with interrupts. The onboard NIC was a VIA and the PCI NIC was a Realtek. Even with polling enabled.
Now, I'm running all Intel NICS and see about 0.1% usage on interrupts at 20Mbps.
Riley
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That page is getting updated soon with much more info, including notes on NIC differences, pulling from content from the coming pfSense book.
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Sweet!!
Riley
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How badly is the on-board Realtek NIC likely to slow things down? I have a PCI Intel NIC as the second connection.
Which is best to use as LAN/WAN, or doesn't it make much difference?
I will be using traffic shaping if it makes any difference.
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See the (many) threads on the issue, including a post from me in the last week or so.
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Basically if you want that it works dont use realtek's and stick to intel.
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I got everything up and running today. Limited to 10Mb with polling off, 6.5Mb with it on. FAIL.
I'm going to get a dual Intel NIC off eBay and see if that fixes things. I really hope it does.
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I installed the dual NIC (Compaq, two Intel chips, fxp) and now the machine won't boot :(
I can see it gets as far as "Configuring WAN interface…" on the serial console. I read that DHCP time-out can be up to 20 minutes, but I waited half and hour and it still didn't work. I also tried a clean install from the original image to erase all configuration. After assigning interfaces, it hung again.
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DHCP timeout will never be more than a minute (there was a version quite a while ago with a bug that made it wait longer, long since resolved). Something going on with your hardware not playing well together. Try the usual, BIOS update, disable PNP OS.
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I tried everything, but it just won't work. I even tried another card with different PCI controller. I guess this box just does not like having more than one PCI device :(
I am looking for more suitable and cheap hardware. As usual it seems to be a case of "good, fast, cheap - pick any two" :(
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Is your power supply capable of supplying the current needed by the dual NIC PCI card?
Maybe the box was built to a price (or size) and consequently the power supply doesn't have much margin.
