New Mini-ITX box - Realtek or Intel NICs ?
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As noted here …
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,21989.0.html
Intel NICs seem to be preferred over Realtek, but that combo is either difficult to find in a Mini-ITX solution and/or more costly.
Ideally I would like more than two NICs (dual WAN, mini-switch, etc), but to keep budgets down, that bings me back to Realtek options.
Concerns are raised here ... http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,2765.0.html
but that is all pre-1.2.3 ... so is hardware support more comprehensive now due to FreeBSD 6.3, etc ?I am tempted to snag something like this for pfSense ...
http://cgi.ebay.ca/Intel-Atom-330-Mini-ITX-M350-2GB-3xGBLAN-NC92-330-LF_W0QQitemZ130303884735QQcmdZViewItemQQptZDesktop_PCs?hash=item1e56b77dbf
but would prefer to confirm compatibility prior to making an investment.Thoughts ? Suggestions ?
Many thanks in advance ...
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Intel NICs seem to be preferred over Realtek, but that combo is … more costly.
As usual: you get what you pay for.
Recent Realtek NICs aren't that bad anymore and do work. Depending on the amount of traffic you have to push it might be sufficient or not.
For home use or a small office I'd consider it OK. But both of us didn't tell any figures ;-) -
Thanks for the feedback Chris.
It would be for home/home office use.
Currently with about a dozen clients (wired+wireless).
Monthly traffic totals between 100 and 150GB and the ISP connection is cable with 25Mbps IN/2Mbps OUT bandwidth capabilities.I've been running DD-WRT on various routers for this envirnoment and am currently using an ASUS RT-N16 (with wirless disabled) as my primary router.
I want to up the ante and keep DD-WRT for all my wireless and secondary routers but migrate to pfSense for my primary router/firewall.
Investing a few bucks is not the biggest concern (I can probably manage up to $500 ) but I would like "solid & reliable" to be part of that investment along with "room to grow" … especially since my ISP has a 100Mbps/5Mbps service that I can move to in the future.
The Jetway Mini-ITX w/4xGLAN, dual core Atom, etc seems economical, but if there's a better bet out there, then I am all ears.
Thanks again for any & all constructive feedback.
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The Jetway board will do it performance-wise for 25/2 but the reliability may not be what you are after. I've had a few of those fail. In fact, I've only got 1 left in working condition of my original 5.
As to 100/5, that's pushing it with an Atom if you're planning on doing anything but NAT (ie. adding Squid, IPSec, etc.)
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100/5 may not be that far down the road…. so I guess I shall investigate further.
:)
