Please recommend hardware for a Router with Captive Portal for wireless network

[tessio]

Hi guys,

I'm an administrator of a wireless network, which contains 16 WiFi access points in the infrastructure mode and 100 Mbps WAN link.
There are about 1600 wireless clients in the network. I have to change a hardware router to a PC-based router with pfSense and setup Captive Portal on it.

I badly need your recommendation on a hardware configuration. Will the following hardware suit my needs?

MB: Intel BOXDQ77KB (s1155, Intel Q77, PCI-Ex16, 2 LAN)
CPU: Intel Core i3-3210 3.2GHz/3MB/1600MHz
RAM: 4 Gb DDR3 SO-DIMM
Case: Cooler Master Elite 120 (RC-120A-KKN1)
PSU: FSP ATX-300PAF 300W
HDD: SSD Intel 330 60GB 2.5" SATAIII MLC

Thanks in advance.

[cmb]

That'd be more than adequate for the described load, it's a good choice.

[asterix]

How many simultaneous clients are you taking into account here? How is the client browsing/downloading history? Any P2P file sharing?

The reason I am asking this is because 1600 users is a fairly big number no matter what anyone says. 100Mbps WAN might be your bottleneck. Out of 1600 even if a 1000 users connect simultaneously with lets say 1000 connections from each user (browsing, video, chats, mybe p2p… etc), that's 1000000 (1 million) connections. Also you haven't mentioned portal authentication method.

Honestly, if $$ is not the concern here go for a i5/i7 system (2 of them) with at least 6GB RAM (give room for other packages to breathe just in case) and do a CARP for a fail over in case the primary dies.