PfSense with Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V
-
What is the WAN connected to? Sounds like it failing to auto-negotiate a link correctly. Try adding a switch between the WAN and whatever device it's connected to. You could try forcing the speed/duplex but Realtek NICs can be a bit difficult in that area.
Steve
-
My WAN is connected to a NETGEAR GBit-Switch. The same NIC works great on Windows 7.
- 8 days later
-
I just wanted to report that I've been running this board little issue since the end of september.
I was able to do the DOS based BIOS upgrade with ease from a USB stick (F3 I think). The install took some minor creativity but worked pretty smoothly. I was able to install an Intel 32GB SSD and enable TRIM which has been great. 4GB of memory seems like overkill for my household usage. I'm using internal NICs and running 2.2a built on 10/3 for now. Its powered by a PicoPSU 80.
Sips power at 13W most of the time, but I did see fluctuations + 1.5W when installing and doing other heavy activity.
The one catch I have is that a reboot or hard boot after power failure when no monitor is connected will result in an error when booting from the SSD. It has only happened twice so it hasn't been a huge issue. The first time I hooked it to a monitor, did a proper shutdown, and it booted fine. The second time I turned it off after some alert beeps, turned it back on (maybe twice, but I think only once), and eventually heard the familiar PF boot alert.
This thing has been great for me so far, and since I don't expect awesome service speeds any time too soon I think it should serve me well for a few years while paying for itself in power. Thanks for the tips!
-
I've had this board from the beginning of December and all seems to be working great now - I had some challenges getting the right settings in PfSense (as I'm pretty new to it) which was most of my problems. However, one thing I would like to comment on is that in addition to the bios settings previously listed I had to set CSM to all legacy settings (and disable Network) and for "IDE configuration" I set everything to IDE, and then AFTER install I set it back to AHCI Mode - made a world of difference as did the most recent RC2.2 from Dec 22nd. I'm still in the testing phase (can't hook this up until I know it works and works well otherwise the wife and kids will scowl at me for messing with the home network again!) but thus far, I have Snort, PFblocker, and Squid running fine on it, all services are up and no material issues that I can tell.
I did notice that when I push a 1GB file from the squid proxy cache to a machine snort push up cpu utilization to about 43% at 450Mbps transfer rate, but downloading the same size package over my 50Mbps internet connection the CPU utilization is only 12%….so for stuff over the internet this board has a lot of headroom.
I plan to test out Open VPN soon (learning curve will be a challenge) but very impressed with Pfsense and the GA-J1900N-D3V capabilities.
- 7 days later
-
Could someone give step by step instructions on what they did to update the BIOS or even get into it. I'm pretty sure my board came with F1. Every time it boots it goes to the EFI Shell menu.
Things I've tried:
-Clearing CMOS and Reboot, same
-Formatting a USB as FreeDOS with the BIOS files, same
-USB Drive with Windows 8 GPT, same
-USB keyboard attached to PS/2 converter, same
-Pressing Delete as fast as possible on bootup, sameEverything I've come across to try does nothing, still goes to the EFI Shell Version 2.31 screen with yellow text. I can type exit and then it will say insert media and reboot but that is all it will do. Rebooting goes back to the same screen. Did anyone else encounter and find a way around or should I just RMA it?
-
follow the instructions here: http://www.gigabytenordic.com/wordpress/flash-update-bios-gigabyte-bay-trail-motherboards-j1800-j1900/
it updates automatically If I reall correctly
-
Could someone give step by step instructions on what they did to update the BIOS or even get into it. I'm pretty sure my board came with F1. Every time it boots it goes to the EFI Shell menu.
Things I've tried:
-Clearing CMOS and Reboot, same
-Formatting a USB as FreeDOS with the BIOS files, same
-USB Drive with Windows 8 GPT, same
-USB keyboard attached to PS/2 converter, same
-Pressing Delete as fast as possible on bootup, sameEverything I've come across to try does nothing, still goes to the EFI Shell Version 2.31 screen with yellow text. I can type exit and then it will say insert media and reboot but that is all it will do. Rebooting goes back to the same screen. Did anyone else encounter and find a way around or should I just RMA it?
@wolfpackunr I had the same problem, however I finally managed to enter BIOS with a PS/2 keyboard attached instead of a USB one. But even if I remove the EFI shell from the boot priority list, the board still boots into the shell. The only option so far was to disable UEFI support entirely and switch to legacy mode, then it skips the EFI shell and boots normally. Really weird.
- 7 days later
-
pfS 2.2 RC runs pretty well.
Throughput NAT ~ 850 MBit / sec, one core @ 100%.
Throughput OpenVPN ~ 80 - 100 MbitOpenSSL cryptodev:
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-128-cbc 33849.30k 36329.11k 37343.55k 37570.46k 37528.13ktype 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-256-cbc 24961.94k 25960.98k 26427.82k 26561.19k 26590.05k18 Watts power consumption at idle and high load with 3,5" HDD.
-
That's pretty good. What do people get on better hardware with better NICs? If that 850Mb/s is maxing out a core then what is it? pfSense doing it's thing or the NIC drivers having to work hard because of a crappy NIC?
Still, it'll be a while before this is a problem for me :)
-
@tfp
that's pretty good, better than what I got:
(not using Open VPN, just NAT, but running snort, squid, darkstat)
Iperf Server:
My personal computer
Core i3 4130T
ASUS Mini ITX DDR3 2600 LGA 1150 Motherboards H97I-PLUS
Used on-board Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (2) I218-VIpfer Client:
Pfsense
J1900
Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V
Used on-board Realtek GbE LANResults:
–----------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.101, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 65.0 KByte (default)[ 3] local 192.168.1.1 port 47614 connected with 192.168.1.101 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 864 MBytes 725 Mbits/sec -
@FarmerB3rd:
That's pretty good. What do people get on better hardware with better NICs? If that 850Mb/s is maxing out a core then what is it? pfSense doing it's thing or the NIC drivers having to work hard because of a crappy NIC?
Crappy NICs in my opinion. My other system:
http://client.mitac.com/products-embedded-board-PD12TI.html Atom D2500 (Intel GBit NIC ;D)
Throughput NAT: full 1000 Mbit
Throughput OpenVPN: Currently can't be tested, sorry. It's a productive system with bandwith limited WAN.type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-128-cbc 21775.06k 27965.80k 29094.76k 29383.80k 29469.99ktype 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-256-cbc 15705.69k 21743.30k 22361.44k 22595.01k 22643.80kIntel i3 3240 3,4 Ghz: AES 128: 345 MByte / sec, AES 256: 278 Mbyte / sec.
-
I bought one in the end - at least to test it, but I am unable to make pppoe to work - i tried both fresh settings and uploading a backup from my current pfsense installation.
Media: usb drive
Pfsense: 2.2-RC (amd64) / built on Tue Dec 09 09:46:36 CST 2014 / FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE (the 2.2 release candidate)
wan: re0
lan: re1
bios version: F3Pfsense boots without any obvious issues, ran for 24 hours without missing a ping but pppoe isn't working…
I have attached a screenshot of the interface status.
Sometimes i get in the pppoe logs "Acess denied (external check failed)" but I am 100% sure the usernam/password is correct - I copied (and manually rewrote when copy-pasting did not seem to work) them from the backup file of the current running pfsense firewall.
I also set the wan mac address the same as to make sure it isn't filtered by my isp.Any hints on what should I try?
-
Also good to know:
- Logitech K270 wireless kit works with bios
- microsoft desktop 800 wireless kit does NOT work (can type at uefi prompt but can't enter bios by pressing DEL)
-
Pfsense: pfSense-2.2-RC-1g-amd64-nanobsd-vga-20150115-1212.img
WAN: PPPOE
LINK: Gigabit
Firmware: F3speed test: upload
CPU: 0.8% user, 0.0% nice, 0.0% system, 31.9% interrupt, 65.3% idle
speed: 500Mbpsspeed test: upload
CPU: 0.4% user, 0.0% nice, 0.2% system, 7.2% interrupt, 92.2% idle
speed: 100MbpsOut of the box, with pppoe set up and lan configured with dhcp
Mem: 69M Active, 32M Inact, 138M Wired, 940K Cache, 63M Buf, 3585M FreeSteps done to install pfsense:
First of all, you need to update the BIOS to F3 since the motherboard probably will ship with F1.
Update BIOS
-
Power on the MB and reset the BIOS to defaults.
-
Create a bootable USB of Windows 8/8.1 and install on a spare harddrive (do it on the motherboard itself, not another computer), F1 will kinda only boot to Win8-USB's.
-
When successfully booted to Win8, visit http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4918#utility and change to your installed OS, download and install Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (probably not necessary, the install will thell you) and then APP Center.
-
Start APP Center from C:\Program\Gigabyte or such, and wait for the shitty program to start. When loaded, update the damn thing.
-
Use the APP Center program to download @BIOS.
-
When installed, use @BIOS from the APP Center to download and flash F3, choose "Install from server" or similar, follow the steps and you will be on F3 in a moment.
-
Reboot and enter BIOS to check that you are on F3, if thats the case, once again do reset BIOS to defaults.
-
Power off and remove harddrive and Win8 USB.
Create bootable pfSense
-
Download the memstick or nanobsd-vga version (your choice if you want to install full version to another USB-stick or run the embedded version) from pfSense download-page. I have been using nanobsd-vga for this test.
-
Flash the .img to you USB-stick, win32 image writer works like a charm.
BIOS settings
-
Attach the pfSense USB and boot to BIOS.
-
Reset to default, and ONLY change the following:
Advanced -> CSM Configuration CSM Support - Enabled Boot Option filter - Legacy Only Network - Do not launch Storage - Legacy Only Video - UEFI First Other PCI devices - Legacy Only
Advanced -> USB Configuration Legacy USB support - Enabled USB3.0 support - Enabled XHCI hand-off - Disabled EHCI hand-off - Disabled USB Mass storage device support - Enabled
- Under USB configuration you should see your USB-stick listed.
Chipset -> South Bridge (I think? If I remembered correctly.) Restore after AC power loss - Power On
- Under boot, change harddrive BBS priority and set you USB-stick to #1, then change first boot option to your USB-stick and disable #2 boot option.
- boots on power on straight to pfsense
- reboots without issue
- 26 degrees Celsius (4 degrees over room temp after 4 hours of use)
- Will put a zwave power meter on it soon and see how much energy it uses.
- Ram: Kingston 4GB, DDR3, 1600MHz, SODIMM P/N KVR16S11S8/4
-
- 14 days later
-
Has anyone used this with an Intel NIC? I have a spare HP NC360T and thinking about using this with a PCI->PCIe adapter.
-
@ak:
Has anyone used this with an Intel NIC? I have a spare HP NC360T and thinking about using this with a PCI->PCIe adapter.
I've installed a 2-port Intel PCI NIC and it works fine, I have no idea if the PCI-PCIe will work at all
there is another J1900 board from asrock that looks interested that has a 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 Slot see here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157496
-
I've installed a 2-port Intel PCI NIC and it works fine, I have no idea if the PCI-PCIe will work at all
there is another J1900 board from asrock that looks interested that has a 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 Slot see here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157496
Thanks - did consider the ASRock board. Decided against it in the end as with the Gigabyte I have certainty that at least two ports work and can use pfSense. With the ASRock, if the NIC doesn't work, I have to find an alternative solution.
-
About to order all the bits - separate thread asking about SSD vs HDD. So my shortlist for this board is
- Motherboard - this one!
- 8GB DDR3L Kingston RAM (single stick)
- 60Gb SSD Kingston V300
- MiniBox M350 Case (http://linitx.com/product/minibox-m350-universal-miniitx-enclosure-black/12488)
- 80W pico psu (http://linitx.com/product/minibox-12v-80w-picopsu80/11459)
- FSP 60W 12V power adapter.
Willing to get 2x8Gb RAM - would this make a significant difference if I am planning to use Squid, Snort, OpenVPN client, and possible ClamAV? I ask about 16Gb as I read someone try tis and 16Gb was recognised (though Gigabyte specs says 8Gb).
Anything wrong with my choice - or changes I should make?
Wish list additions:
- LCD for status display - but can't find anything reasonably priced.
- Mini PCIe wifi (at least b/g/n simultaneously) card that works with 2.2 - think this board can only accept half length.
-
Hey,
I want this Board for my new Pfsense build.
I have one question for the owners.
Are the two Realtek nic good enough for a 120/12 MB line.
-
- 19 days later
-
Just joined the community to give my own two bits on this topic.
I purchased the J1900N-D3V, it came with the F2 bios, and pfSense booted fine with a Nano USB.
Seems to be running okay, operates at 28C average, iperf gets 870Mb/s with CPU below 5%, and hasn't dropped or erred a single packet thus far (according to the logs).
Only issue, is that with certain applications I get a random stutter. Skype for instance, will occasionally stop sending audio/video for a few seconds without actually dropping the call and while continuing to receive audio/video.
I've noticed similar problems with Youtube played over an Xbox, while everything else seems to be fine, including an active Teamspeak server.
My first assumption was to change the firewall optimization to conservative. Sadly this did not seem to resolve the issue.
Anyone have this issue on their installs? My next change will be switching the F2 bios with the F3 mentioned in this thread.
- 2 months later
-
Hi,
I was thinking of building a pfSense box with the ga-j1900n-d3v myself too (or, at worst, with the j1900-based Asrock mobos).
For those that already have these in hands (or anyone who knows), could you please help me understand whether this would be a good fit as an addition (most probably within an Antec ISK110 case) ?
http://www.itinstock.com/intel-expi9404ptg2l20-pro1000-pt-quad-port-gigabit-hh-network-adapter-card-14711-p.asp
Thanks in advance
Peppe -
Given the bad rap this board has gotten on esp on the bios front… thought I would say something positive.
I just also bought and replaced an old failed motherboard with the GA-J1900N-D3V. Ordered it via Amazon, put a 2x4GB memory kit in it.
I had to disable the UEFI boot options, but I loaded 2.2.2 64bit on it without an issues once I did.Note that the board came with F3 already installed on it, so I was able to skip some of the pain others have reported.
No stuttering like JWTech reported, but I'll keep an eye on it.
-Bob
-
Just a followup a few days in… it's still working very well. I was certainly nervous about this board given the discussion but it has been working really well, no issues at all.
-Bob
- 20 days later
-
They released a new Bios (F4) this month for "Improve USB device compatibility". Has anyone tried it yet? I had to go the MS-DOS Bootable Flash Drive route just to get to F3, and am leery of trying for F4.
- 2 months later
-
Finally, do you recommend to use GA-C1037UN-EU (rev2) http://es.gigabyte.com/products/page/mb/ga-c1037un-eurev_20/overview/?
- 12 days later
-
I just got my board and I love it!! I am having difficulty with one thing though. Online gaming is giving me a tough time.
I am getting latency spikes while i play. Does anyone have experience with slowness using these boards and gaming? I was trying to tweak settings, but haven't been able to find anything that fixes it.
- 11 days later
-
Finally, do you recommend to use GA-C1037UN-EU (rev2) http://es.gigabyte.com/products/page/mb/ga-c1037un-eurev_20/overview/?
Am currently using this board and it works fine no issues at all.
-
What is the power comsumption of this board or the Gigabyte GA-C1037UN-EU running pfSense? Has anyone done any measurements?
-
I bought this board yesterday. Bios F3 was already installed. Installation went smooth, but it can't set IP over DHCP. Latest version of pfsense 2.2.4
Do you guys know any solution, beside adding PCI card, i dont have enough space :-\ -
What is the power comsumption of this board or the Gigabyte GA-C1037UN-EU running pfSense? Has anyone done any measurements?
About 10-15W for ga-j1900n-d3v
-
Just got mine yesterday from http://www.mitxpc.com/ Model# EKGBJ1900M350 I got the 4GB RAM instead of the 2GB. Separately I got a Patriot Blaze 60GB SSD for it as well. Mine came with the F4 BIOS and I was able to boot on USB for nano flash setup as well as boot from external USB CD/DVD for full install on the SSD. Only changes I made to BIOS was turn off splash, turn off Vitalization, and disable Audio. Oh ya, using 2.2.4
I setup a test network on my bench with LAN side having my PC and 1000mb switch, and the WAN side having my NAS and a 1000mb switch. I was able to get 80MB throughput with a PC to NAS samba copy of a 3.4GB ISO. Copying it back from the NAS to PC was also 80MB. CPU got to 33% on both runs.
I did the same copy just using a switch, and no router, between the PC and NAS and I get 113MB. This tells me the bottleneck is not the PC or NAS NICs, Cables, or Switches. With the CPU being at 33% as well on the router I am thinking the Realtek NICs in the router.
I am going to setup a VPN on my bench and test this as well. May not get to that for a few days though.
My goal is to turn this into a UTM.
-
Do you guys know any solution, beside adding PCI card, i dont have enough space
If there is no space how you want to add a card then? Startech are producing PCI and PCIe expander
cases perhaps this would then a choice for you. -
@BlueKobold:
Do you guys know any solution, beside adding PCI card, i dont have enough space
If there is no space how you want to add a card then? Startech are producing PCI and PCIe expander
cases perhaps this would then a choice for you.I don't. I was thinking about some config tweaks. Many people had this issue. Im wondering if anybody was able to solve this problem.
-
Where were you measuring that CPU usage? The figure on the dashboard combines all the cores. You need to use the command line to see the individual core usage:
top -SH
You will probably find one core is at 100%.
Steve
-
Does pfsense not use all the Cores?
-
top-SH show two of the four cores at 100% idle during the transfer. The other two cores bounce around form 20% to 80% idle during the transfer. So the average would be 75% idle, or 25% usage. seeing how i am not able to nail down the numbers on the working cores I think the dashboard lower 30's% is fairly accurate. Am i missing something? Does pfSense use all cores?
-
With the CPU being at 33% as well on the router I am thinking the Realtek NICs in the router.
The realtek NICs can be it, but this is not a must be!
I don't. I was thinking about some config tweaks.
Like the most peoples are thinking. If you owns a mSATA or SSD you could try out to activate
the TRIM support and if you owns a CPU that is capable of TurboBoost mode, you could try out
also setting up or activate the PowerD (highadaptive) mode. But if you go by NanoBSD and owns
a mSATA or SSD it would be better to do a full install.Many people had this issue
.
There is no issue! Your switch is only faster then your router not more but also not less!Im wondering if anybody was able to solve this problem.
Which Problem? Let us both imagine you owns two Intel Core i7 CPUs PCs and using iPerf through the
pfSense router the you will see other numbers and if your pfSense is based on a SG-8860 from the
pfSense store I am really sure you will see once more again other numbers!The test your where doing, is comparing your pfSense router (Layer3) against your switch (Layer2)
and this would be not matching any real life scenario!Does pfsense not use all the Cores?
This is even a bit more or less changing at the moment, in earlier days pfSense was only using one CPU
core at the WAN interface but more CPU core for the rest of the entire system. But the developers got
even many more skills and then this thing will be during a change at the time.But on the other hand it will not change anything for you. If you go by hardware fiddled together by
your own and then the pfSense is not serving the same numbers as your switch this is not pointed to
pfSense, then more at the switch you compared to! If you are using a Intel Xeon E3-1286v3 @3,7GHz
and Intel 10 GBit/s server NICs you will archive total other numbers for sure and then it is not relevant
how many cores was in the game but more from which CPU and on which frequency it was running on. -
Exactly.
In pfSense <2.2X the pf process was giant locked and only ever used a single core so machines with fewer but faster cores were preferred if raw throughput was the aim. Since 2.2 the new multithread capable pf in FreeBSD 10 means this is less of an issue but it still won't spread the load evenly across all the cores. You can't just use the dashboard CPU meter when you start hitting limits.
That said you aren't seeing any cores at 100% so I would also start to suspect the Realtek NICs.Steve
- 12 days later
-
Well my pico psu died so i had to wait until they shipped me another. I have the system backup since Friday night. I put windows on it and ran a series of test over a two day period. (memtest, prime95, etc) Everything seems fine. I got pfSense back on it today.
I was doing some surfing and read about the checksum offloading. I have that disabled now and my performance went up and CPU utilization went down. I can now copy files across the router at 89MB, both ways, with only 26% CPU utilization (dash board meter). That's still slower than without the router by about 24MB but better than the shaky 80MB i was getting before disabling the checksum offloading. I will try some other stuff/tweaks but if it does not get any faster than that, and not loose stability, I can live with it.
I have plans to order another and will set it up next to the one I just finished. I will then do VPN between the two and see what I get for performance there. I hope to make another post with findings in the next few weeks.
BTW Thinking of getting the other router with Intel NIC's so I can compare the difference there as well. Will still use the J1900 2.4GHz though. This seems like a really low power, robust little CPU.
Thanks!