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    Hardware needed for Bandwidth limiting and monitoring?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Hardware
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    • D
      dreamliner
      last edited by

      I'm looking for a solution that will allow me to restrict up/down bandwidth speeds to all devices on my network with an exclude list for a handful of addresses.  I'd also like monthly bandwidth reports.

      I bought a Buffalo router running DD WRT and that allows me to limit speeds to all connections and then add an exclude MAC list for other devices to get full speed.

      It doesn't have bandwidth reporting capabilities and uTorrent doesn't seem to be stopped by the global DD WRT bandwidth limiter. So I'm looking at pfSense.

      I was originally going to buy an ITX based system but the cost was over $300 and I wasn't sure if I needed all that or if pfSense will even do what I want.  I have an old Dual Core Athlon 64 system but it only has 1 10/100 onboard network card (its a Dell e521).

      I was looking for a Dual gigabit ethernet card when I came across some older atom thin clients with 3 gigabit ports on ebay that are preconfigured with pfSense for $108.  I'm wondering if they will have enough horsepower not to run into any problems and if they'd work for what I need.

      Here is a link to what I was considering:
      http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pfsense-2-2-HP-t5740-Intel-Atom-N280-2G-RAM-2G-Flash-SSD-3gig-NICs-Wireless-/261805580029?pt=US_Firewall_VPN_Devices&hash=item3cf4d41efd

      I don't really mind spending more money, but I'd hate to buy something I don't need.

      Thoughts?

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      • ?
        Guest
        last edited by

        Hello,

        save the money and then buy a Alix APU or a Soekris net6801 some much more
        money but also the real guaranty to have enough throughput and horsepower.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • E
          edwardwong
          last edited by

          @dreamliner:

          I'm looking for a solution that will allow me to restrict up/down bandwidth speeds to all devices on my network with an exclude list for a handful of addresses.  I'd also like monthly bandwidth reports.

          I bought a Buffalo router running DD WRT and that allows me to limit speeds to all connections and then add an exclude MAC list for other devices to get full speed.

          It doesn't have bandwidth reporting capabilities and uTorrent doesn't seem to be stopped by the global DD WRT bandwidth limiter. So I'm looking at pfSense.

          I was originally going to buy an ITX based system but the cost was over $300 and I wasn't sure if I needed all that or if pfSense will even do what I want.  I have an old Dual Core Athlon 64 system but it only has 1 10/100 onboard network card (its a Dell e521).

          I was looking for a Dual gigabit ethernet card when I came across some older atom thin clients with 3 gigabit ports on ebay that are preconfigured with pfSense for $108.  I'm wondering if they will have enough horsepower not to run into any problems and if they'd work for what I need.

          Here is a link to what I was considering:
          http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pfsense-2-2-HP-t5740-Intel-Atom-N280-2G-RAM-2G-Flash-SSD-3gig-NICs-Wireless-/261805580029?pt=US_Firewall_VPN_Devices&hash=item3cf4d41efd

          I don't really mind spending more money, but I'd hate to buy something I don't need.

          Thoughts?

          the question is: what's the intended throughput you would like to achieve? This affects the way you choose hardware. I saw from some other threads that platforms like Atom D525/D2550 can do somewhat 500-600Mbps NAT throughput. And I just bought a USD250 Celeron 1037U (with 6 x Intel GbE) which showed me 940Mbps NAT throughput (tested by iperf, link here).

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