Hardware Requirement- RAM question

[Wepee]

Hi All,

I am new to pfSense, I have read fair amount of information (may be not enough)
in regards to hardware requirement, specifically referring to RAM memory on the
system.

Currently, I would like to recycle an old dinosaur- Pentium 2 350MHz
system. The motherboard is capable of supporting 256MB x 3 dimm slots = 768MB (max)

I have read on the The Definite Guide v2.1 (draft) stating the minimum
requirement for pfSense to run is the following:

Referring to page 30:
1) CPU = 100 MHz
2) RAM = 256MB or more

Both criteria are meet, as you can see. :)

However, I am a bit concern about installing Snort and Squid proxy
in pfSense. As you know minimum RAM size to run Snort is 512MB.
The reminder RAM usage balance is 256MB (768MB -512MB = 256MB)

Installation will be on USB thumb drive (using memstick image)
So, this means the swap partition will be moved to the RAM

Users on the network will be 5 people maximum.

Question is does the remaining of 256MB suffice for pfSense
to function smoothly and stably, since I am planning to install
more packages later which I assume will take up more space
on the RAM.

Your advice is much appreciated.

Thank you.

[jasonlitka]

Depending on how much bandwidth you've got, that box may get crushed and RAM has nothing to do with it.