Best Hardware for Gateway/VLAN Router/Firewall/VPN

mapdirection

I would build something based on a socket 1155 CPU and use a low end model, such as the G1620. It will almost certainly be sufficient for your needs in a home system but if in the future you want more power you have a huge number of upgrade options.
If you really want to use LACP then don't use more than 2 connections. Personally I don't think you will gain much. Whatever redundancy advantage there is will be outweighed by many other single points of failure.

Steve

Thanks for your advice. What do you think about RAM requirements and also motherboards? In particular, I am concerned about choosing the correct NIC to ensure the box doesn't get flooded with interrupts (I have read on the pfSense doco that Intel is generally good, but RealTek is not good is this regard). Assuming that the motherboard has an on-board NIC then I would probably use that for the WAN connection but will also need a PCIe NIC card to uplink to the switch - I would welcome suggestions on that too.

stephenw10

RAM is cheap, get lots. ;)
If you're planning to run Snort then 2GB or more would probably be recommended. The standard pfSense install doesn't require much, it will run in 256MB.

NIC manufacturer in approximate order of preference are (IMHO):
Intel
Broadcom
Everything else
Realtek

Newer Realtek NICs are a lot better though. A lot of people won't touch them after being burned by their older 10/100 NICs
I can't recommend a multiport NIC personally.

Steve

mapdirection

@stephenw10:

RAM is cheap, get lots. ;)
If you're planning to run Snort then 2GB or more would probably be recommended. The standard pfSense install doesn't require much, it will run in 256MB.

NIC manufacturer in approximate order of preference are (IMHO):
Intel
Broadcom
Everything else
Realtek

Newer Realtek NICs are a lot better though. A lot of people won't touch them after being burned by their older 10/100 NICs
I can't recommend a multiport NIC personally.

Steve

Thanks Steve, good advice. I'll probably end up going for one of the PCIe Intel NICs on the FreeBSD HCL, if there's no material difference between them all…