Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Hardware recommendation for 1 gigabit

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Hardware
    25 Posts 9 Posters 15.2k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • ? This user is from outside of this forum
      Guest
      last edited by

      @iormangund:

      Would Supermicro A2SDi-4C-HLN4F do gigabit?

      Gigabit what? Gigabit media mode? Gigabit VPN with AES256 and SHA512 with no compression and AES-NI turned off? Gigabit masscan? Gigabit routing? Gigabit NAT? Gigabit proxy? Gigabit cache? Gigabit pings? Gigabit toaster? Gigabit toothbrush?

      What it will definitely do: from WAN, to LAN (and back), with NAT and DHCP, and firewall and process Gigabit speeds UDP and TCP.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • W Offline
        Wingspinner
        last edited by

        This is an old thread but it’s still relevant in that with gigabit broadband  increasingly available there are few if any low end router solutions that can pass close to wire speed on uplink alone with a basic firewall enabled. Someone must have pfSense, OPNsense, RouterOS, etc deployed on an x86 box with gigabit broadband as just a basic firewall (as in say the default configuration). If everyone running pfSense has all the bells and whistles enabled it still would still be iseful to hear the configuration they are using to get wire speeds.

        I bought a eBay SFF HP with 4th gen quad core 3.2ghz i5 for $100 with 4g of memory and added an Intel i350 NIC  to replace my Mikrotik RB3011 wihich has  dual core Arm @ 1.2ghz and hw assist bridging and can only muster about 600mbs. Can’t seem to get more than 100mbs out of RouterOS on the new i5 box though. Either a configuration problem or RouterOS x86 version is only running on one core and not optimized for pc architecture or something but I’m tired of messing with it and moving on to something open source. I’ll let you know what I find.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • W Offline
          Wingspinner
          last edited by

          Well, I can say for those that want to know, for my network and duplicating the protection that a Netgear R7800 router provides (which can only achieve around 600mbs with it's 2-core 1.2ghz ARM processor), pfSense and a 4th gen quad core 3.2ghz i5 with 4g of memory and an Intel i350 NIC are huge overkill. After a fresh install and setting up the firewall to provide actually more robust security, I'm seeing consistently 927mbs throughput through the router/firewall vs. 987mbs direct connect to the cable modem with approximately 1% processor utilization shown. That's with 20 or so other clients on the LAN (printers, webcams, etc). Clearly don't need that much horsepower for a non-VPN environment. Have no need for VPN so won't be testing that. Adding 6 or 7 more rules to WAN has no discernible impact to download performance. Clearly symmetrical gigabit would need LAGG or 10g to max out both directions though. The  power requirements are much higher than SSFF single board devices but it's quiet, as a reasonably small footprint, very, very robust hardware design and cheap - $100 on ebay with no HDD. I'm thinking a third or fourth generation i3 at 2.5ghz or more or even a Celeron multi-core would be enough after this experience.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • W Offline
            Wingspinner
            last edited by

            BTW, the Netgear R7800 makes a quite impressive AP can still get well over 800mbs via 802.11AC  wifi on download 20 feet from the R7800 and through one wall.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • ? This user is from outside of this forum
              Guest
              last edited by

              @Wingspinner:

              BTW, the Netgear R7800 makes a quite impressive AP can still get well over 800mbs via 802.11AC  wifi on download 20 feet from the R7800 and through one wall.

              Perhaps, but for the same amount of money you can get two Ubiquiti UniFi AP-AC LITE which do that same thing.. but you'll have two :p

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • First post
                Last post
              Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.