Advice needed on a board for a 100mbit line

[Peter Kaagman]

Hi there,

I'm orientating on a a router solution for a 100mbit point 2 point connection. Have been playing around with an Alix 2D13 board which maxed out around 53mbit (no NAT, no rules). Looking at the sizing of pfSense this would be about accurate: it states 21-50mbit with a 500mhz processor. This would be a bit of a waste since we pay a lot of money to have 100mbit.  So I started looking around for a better performing board.
The applianceshop.eu allso has OPNsense boxes with 1.1 or 1.6 gigahertz processors (and gigabit ethernet), which should max out at 850mbit according to the brochure. But it is a big leap from a 140 euro Alix board (including enclosure) to a 500-600 euro OPNsense box.

Do you guys know a board in between those 2?

Peter

[jasonlitka]

Any Atom box with Gig-E ports will meet your needs provided all you use is the firewall.  If you're running VPN, snort, squid, L7, etc. then you'll fall short.

Try something like this:

http://www.mini-box.com/Mini-Box-M350-Barebone-System

[slth]

Please don't build another atom system in 2011!

You'd be WAY better of using a socket 1155 system:

-Much and much better performance
-Lower total system idle power consumption
-More capable for future extension
-About the same price or in some cases even cheaper

IIRC theres also a thread on this platform

Any questions? Just ask :)

[Peter Kaagman]

found a (locked) topic from 2008 on the via nab 7500

anyone tested it yet? looks like a nice board…

edit:
never mind.... the Via C7 processor is not on the compatibility list... kinda hard testing it I guess

[asterix]

As "slth" suggested.. don't waste your time and money on an Atom build. They are under performers and definitely will "not" be able to support a 100Mbit WAN.

Invest in a i3/i5 1155 mini-ITX system with at least 2GB RAM. It would run you close to about $380 to $410 or even less if you know where to shop from. The performance will be up to par and will have power savings too as i3/i5 are way better than their predecessors in terms of power consumption especially when idle.

I have now about 60 users on a i5 system supporting two 50Mbit lines simultaneously without a hitch.

[stephenw10]

Any of the dual core Atoms will easily handle a 100Mbps WAN connection. See results with a D510 here. Over 200Mbps NAT/firewall throughput.
However if you ever decide to add packages or use VPN extensively you may run out of processing power.

Steve

[Jarpse]

A VIA processor should work, but I don't think they perform well.

An Atom should be a good choice, or a system built on the newer 1155 socket. A Core i3 will consume more, but will be very, very fast.

[stephenw10]

I think that, as asterix pointed out above, the point is that in fact a Core i3 system may in fact be very similar power consumtion to an Atom. Especially of the system is loaded. For example see:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/d510mo-intel-atom,2616-11.html
And that is with the firs generatino i3. The newer Sandybridge chips are far more efficient.

Steve

Edit: Here are some interesting figures for the newer model:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-2100t_11.html#sect0