PfSense on mini Tower? - dual core 2.8 ghz, 4 gig ram, dual gig intel NIC
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Greetings fellow pfSensors,
I am in need of a gateway firewall, and have decided to use an older machine to save doll hairs. It's an emachine EL1352-03. I will be purchasing a dual gig intel LAN pci-x (16) for it.
Specific uses:
- Gateway Firewall
- NAT
- Routing
- Snort
- Squid (maybe)Comments / Concerns:
1. It's a dual core 2.8 ghz AMD processor. This should give me decent firewall throughput, correct? At least 100 Mbs (going off the pfsense hardware forum).
2. Is 4 gigs of ram going to be a problem? I haven't looked to see if its upgradeable, but i doubt it (considering this is a mini-tower)
3. It has an Nvidia integrated GIG LAN chipset- so, (a) will it work in pfsense, and (b) if it does work, and assuming it's a crappy chipset, should the decent CPU compensate for the LAN chipset latency?
4. See belowLAN matters:
- SETUP: WAN -> pfSense box (emachine) -> 10 port unmanaged switch -> two (2) seperate wifi AP's
- Question: Assuming the onboard Nvidia LAN works in pfsense, (1) do i really need an extra dual-lan pci-x card (vs single LAN NIC), and (2) what benefits would i get from the dual-lan (vs a single pci-x gig Intel NIC)?Sorry if this is confusing as heck; i've been studying for law school finals :-\
Cheers
|\ Wakesk8r /| -
will work fine. you need more ram if you want to run squid. make the pfsense box the dhcp and the wifi routers dhcp forwarders/ access points.
i assume your going to install pfsense on the HD.
make sure the intel nic you buy works with pfsense