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    Bit of advice for a newbie needed..

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    • S
      swampster
      last edited by

      Hey folks new here..  go easy I'm a total newbie with this stuff  :D

      I've pretty much decided on building myself a pfsense router for my SOHO network.. and have been weighing up various hardware options.. from a full blown pc, to various mini itx systems etc..
      Today, I stumbled across this… Jetway JBC362F36-2600 - http://linitx.com/product/13607

      I thought, nice and compact.. lower power consumption than a PC, pricing isn't horrendous.. but just wanted to make sure it'd be suitable.
      Probably run it off a CF card*, and add a miniPCIe wifi card to it too..

      Will it do the job?

      Cheers..

      *Strike that, just seen the price of CFAST cards might as well stick in an SSD.

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      • M
        matguy
        last edited by

        @swampster:

        Hey folks new here..  go easy I'm a total newbie with this stuff  :D

        I've pretty much decided on building myself a pfsense router for my SOHO network.. and have been weighing up various hardware options.. from a full blown pc, to various mini itx systems etc..
        Today, I stumbled across this… Jetway JBC362F36-2600 - http://linitx.com/product/13607

        I thought, nice and compact.. lower power consumption than a PC, pricing isn't horrendous.. but just wanted to make sure it'd be suitable.
        Probably run it off a CF card*, and add a miniPCIe wifi card to it too..

        Will it do the job?

        Cheers..

        *Strike that, just seen the price of CFAST cards might as well stick in an SSD.

        yeah, as you noticed, CFAST cards are not Compact Flash cards.  They're basically the SATA version of Compact Flash (as Compact Flash is ATA/PATA/IDE, natively.)  Since they're new and a fairly niche market, they're not cheap.

        I would not expect the NIC's to work in the current pfSense 2.0.2 version.  It should work in dev snapshots of 2.1, but, you're running development versions.

        Here's the link directly to Jetway's page on the board: http://www.jetway.com.tw/jw/barebone_view.asp?productid=946&proname=JBC362F36-2600-B%20/%20JBC362F36W-2600-B

        It is cute, though.

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        • S
          swampster
          last edited by

          Oh well back to the drawing board then :)

          .. at least till 2.1 is released, thanks matguy

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          • N
            NOYB
            last edited by

            Have you considered a repurposed notebook?  They can make excellent pfSense routers.  And have built in nearly everything, UPS, keyboard, console display, onboard NIC.  Can either use a VLAN capable switch or add a pc card or USB NIC for WAN interface.

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            • F
              fragged
              last edited by

              @swampster:

              Oh well back to the drawing board then :)

              .. at least till 2.1 is released, thanks matguy

              The current 2.1 builds are stable, but still have a few mostly ipv6 and captive portal related issues. Many people have been running them for a long long time. I wouldn't count it as a reason not to buy that sweet little box :)

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              • S
                swampster
                last edited by

                Yeah I might give the laptop idea a bit of a whirl, I don't know why but I'd effectively ruled it out.. but it would make sense ('scuse the pun) for the time being.

                I'll hold off the dev builds till I'm happy with tinkering with pfsense, besides I do have a potential use for the captive portal..

                Thanks for the help guys :)

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                • M
                  matguy
                  last edited by

                  Yeah, if you have a VLAN capable switch or a PCMCIA NIC sitting around, an old laptop can be damn decent.  I even have a few PCMCIA -> CF adapters sitting around that would probably make that work even better, I use 'em to flash the CF cards.  Or, there's a lot of 2.5" Hard drive to CF adapters, both PATA and SATA, but at that point it might make sense to just get a standard SSD, especially if you don't have the CF card already.

                  Remember, though, standard CardBus is 33MB/s, in a perfect world where both the laptop and the card can run in dword mode it can get 133MB/s, but I don't know the odds of that coming together.  What that means is a Gb card might not transfer anywhere near 1Gb/s, maybe roughly 1/3 that.  Although, for most WANs, that's fine.

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    I've never seen a laptop that could boot from pcmcia, did they exist? I guess in IDE mode maybe.

                    Steve

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                    • N
                      NOYB
                      last edited by

                      @swampster:

                      Yeah I might give the laptop idea a bit of a whirl

                      No personal experience but have read that Lenovo's don't work so well with pfSense.  So may want to steer clear of those.  I'm running a DELL Inspiron 5100 with the VLAN for WAN interface and a Netgear GS108T SmartSwitch.

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