ALIX 2D13

amurdaca

Hello guys, I'm new here, I've bought an ALIX 2D13 Bundle with a vpn pci accellerator running pfsense 2.1-RELEASE on a 4GB CF

This box will be the entry point to my home network (meaning there's only a Gb modem attached to the WAN interface). After this there are a 24 managed switch and a Gb wireless AP connected to the switch.

Is the alix board suitable to get good performance with the above network design? There are just 4 laptops/smarthphones connected simultaneously. My idea is to use the box for Router/Firewal + VPN server (maybe just 1 peer-to-peer, and a normal client, me) + DNS + DHCP

Also, do you think I can get Squid working here? Or I just burnt the box? :D

I can't comment on the performance aspect with regards to the general networking, however you should be able to use the squid package. Just be sure to set the "Hard disk cache system" to "null" as it is indicated on the settings page. Trying to utilize a 4GB CF card for cache probably won't fair well. Also, if you want to disable the caching behavior of squid altogether, there is the "cache deny all" override that you can add. This way you get the ability to proxy but not cache.

http://wiki.squid-cache.org/SquidFaq/ConfiguringSquid

phil.davis

This post has some recent Alix 2D13 private testing: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,70911.msg387295.html#msg387295
The Netgate store has some performance specs that are known to be good: http://store.netgate.com/Netgate-m1n1wall-2D3-2D13-Black-P216C83.aspx
If you just need internet speed in those ranges, then you are fine. The GB ethernet port from your ISP is going to plug into the Alix 100Mbps WAN port - so obviously it will be impossible to achieve over 100Mbps! And the Alix CPU just doing basic NAT and is going to max out at 80-something Mbps anyway.

As nichabod_crane says, you will be able to use Squid+SquidGuard, but obviously with no disk cache, and the max throughput for web browsing will obviously be much lower than 80-something Mbps.