Hardware check for me please
-
Hey guys, completely new to pfsense so I wanted to stop by and ask some questions about my hardware before I dove in. Instead of buying a new router for $200 to do what I want I decided to try my hand at building my own. It will be supporting a 50/35 fiber connection as the Wan and I would like to have gigabit speeds in the house. It would be handling maybe 6-8 computers and media servers and a few wireless clients. I would like it to be able to handle at least one vpn connection and traffic shaping/QoS. Hopefully with some room to spare to grow a bit in the future.
Specs:
C2D E7500
2GB DDR2
30gb SSD
10/100 onboard NICThe main things I was wondering were whether the onboard NIC would be a problem for me. I want gigabit speeds on my network, but I realize I will bottle-necked at the 10/100 speed from the Wan speed from my ISP Should I not be able to use the 10/100 of that nic and a 10/100 pci card to feed into a gigabit switch and get gigabit speeds inside my home network? Will springing for a pci-e dual gigabit card help my speed/latency at all (they are like $40, so not that big of a deal if it'll help)? And will this box have the power to serve up the 50/35 to my house with as low of a latency as possible (for online gaming and the like).
Thanks
-
You should have no problems with that hardware on a 50/35 line and will have plenty of headroom.
If you only have two interfaces, WAN and LAN, then traffic between clients on the LAN does not pass through pfSense at all, it is passed directly between clients via the gigbabit switch. Only traffic to and from the internet will go through pfSense so the 10/100 NIC will not sow down internal traffic at all.Steve
-
Thanks for the reassurance!