Hardware recommendations for 40gb internet, 100gb lan

mercer2

@patch My issue is that im not proficient in linux.

so would like something easy to setup and monitor.

Derelict

@mercer2 What does the ISP providing the 40Gb service recommend?

flat4

No help here...

However first thing first who provides 40g internet to the home? and second what the hell do you do at home to have a setup like that.

I mean what you have there puts my "work" data center to shame.

mercer2

@flat4 ezeefiber is the isp
houston

2.- not much is mainly audio (32 zones) and video over ip distribution around the house

alt text

flat4

@mercer2 ah ok, grew up in H-Town.
Still heck of a setup. Like others have said you're in enterprise level hardware.
TNSR would be better suited for you speeds.

Cool_Corona

Really.... this is nowhere a home setup.

Way to much power alone to support that kind of hardware.

I just dont get why......

If you run LB on ESXi, then enough hosts can do what you need on pfsense.

Patch

@mercer2 said in Hardware recommendations for 40gb internet, 100gb lan:

so would like something easy to setup and monitor.

A Lan with 40-100Gb capacity sounds generous but possibly useful.

To size your Wan, do not use what your ISP can provide and what Speedtest can measure (although at that speed you would probably have to run multiple concurrently).

Instead look at how many concurrent video channels you will want to access remotely. Or what is the actual high bandwidth concurrent tasks you will actually do.

The result of this calculation is likely to be within high end pfsense hardware capacity. If not someone is going to have to manage an enterprise system.

If you want it just for fun, then try playing with TNSR

mercer2

@patch
Thank you very much for your answer.

This is mostly for fun, and nothing I do needs 1gb, but I love tech so is always fun to push the edge for me.

our biggest data use is watching netflix.

Still it would be fun to test and play with 40gb bandwidth.

all of our neighborhood is getting 10g. so looking for ideas on how to better use such a big amount of capacity.

Patch

@mercer2
Sounds reasonable to me.

If it was me I would get hardware of at least Netgate 6100 level performance (but you may want a Netgate 1537 or equivalent) and load pfsense on it and get that running.

I assume you also have a hardware failure continuity plan, which involves having access to backup router hardware. After checking you can load pfsense and your configuration on it, load TNSR and experiment with it.

If you get board with TNSR then set up the two routers in a HA configuration.

stephenw10

You basically need something about as fast as you can get! And obviously it will need to have 40G NICs. But it still won't pass 40Gbps with pfSense. You would need to be running TNSR to actually get there.

Steve

luckman212

@mercer2 your IT room is about the size of my entire NYC apartment. How did you accumulate so much hardware?

stephenw10

@luckman212 said in Hardware recommendations for 40gb internet, 100gb lan:

your IT room is about the size of my entire NYC apartment.

Ha. Yup could fit some bunks in there and put it on AirBnB!

The power consumption would drain my experimenting fund in a few days I suspect.

Steve

mercer2

it is kind of crazy, our house is 15k sqft, with 30 tons of ac. our electrical service panel is 1200amps and this 3 racks have 7 x 30 amps dedicated circuits plus a dedicated 2 ton ducted ac.

any recommendations on hardware components for a pfsense capable that also could be migrated to tnsr and snort?

thanks

flat4

@mercer2
Sir what do you do for a living?
15k House, 30 tons of ac,
going to assume that's in a basement?

luckman212

@mercer2 said in Hardware recommendations for 40gb internet, 100gb lan:

any recommendations on hardware components

uh yeah this should fit nicely in your 15k sqft home: PA-7080 (and will only set you back $170K)

mercer2

I wish!!!

trying to be cost effective and wife not mad about it.

luckman212

@mercer2 Ehh.. if she's not mad about 3 full racks, the 600lb workgroup printer or the electric bill from those 2100 Amps...for your homelab, I can't see her complaining about anything.

My wife got mad at the little LED on our Apple TV, I had to cover it with electrical tape

stephenw10

In all seriousness firewall/routing at 40Gbps is beyond pfSense scale. TNSR can do it though and is very cost effective at those bandwidths compared with other enterprise routers, like that PA.

Steve

Derelict

@derelict said in Hardware recommendations for 40gb internet, 100gb lan:

@mercer2 What does the ISP providing the 40Gb service recommend?

Still no answer to this. Genuinely curious.

Patch

@mercer2 said in Hardware recommendations for 40gb internet, 100gb lan:

any recommendations on hardware components for a pfsense capable that also could be migrated to tnsr and snort

As reference point I would start with Netagate characterised hardware
https://www.netgate.com/tnsr-software/how-to-buy#appliances
https://docs.netgate.com/tnsr/en/latest/platforms/ and
https://www.netgate.com/tnsr-software/performance#get-to-know

For software in a home lab; Netgate have a free option which would be a reasonable place to start if you are just trying it for fun https://www.netgate.com/pricing-tnsr-software

Similarly pfsense is available in a free community edition https://www.pfsense.org/download/ or a free home lab versions https://www.netgate.com/pricing-pfsense-plus

If you want to start with more capacity you will need to scale it up from there, which probably involves adding a 40Gb network interface and more Xeon processes.

Personally I would not push the hardware specs till I had experimented with pfsense & tnsr to see if I was comfortable working with them. Both pfsense and tnsr run on most recent 64-bit x86 processor with SSE4.2 extensions. You may already have under used hardware meeting the minimum requirements.