First Post - starting pfSense Next Week :)

[iamwardicus]

Hi All!

Well I've finally gotten tired of my wireless router being a PoS (hasn't been right since a power outage) so I'm going to redo the home network a bit.

Found a Jetway 2930 4 port LAN based build on ebay for a little over 300, includes 8gb ram and a 60gb SSD drive - I couldn't build it for that myself so I decided to snag it.
Also ordered a Dell 2816 switch from ebay so I have a little extra connectivity for wired devices.

Overall the network will be my cable modem bridged into the pfsense box.  from there one port for the main office Dell switch, and a second port running to my living room switch (just a basic dumb switch - and my wireless rout…. umm, access point)
Device wise it'll be a gaming console, audio receiver, television, 2 computers, 2 laptops, 2 cell phones, 2 tablets, and then any additional devices when friends/family come to visit.

I plan on running pfSense with snort and squid after I get an initial setup and test done.  I'm sure I'll be back around the forums to read up on configuration.  I haven't touched networking in over 13 years so this is going to be fun.

If anyone has any up front advice it's greatly appreciated!
I look forward to my time spent here :)

[heper]

with modern websites (social media/youtube/…), squid has a hitrate of less in 5% in many cases. If you don't need to save bandwidth: don't bother

i'm sure some will disagree with me.

[KOM]

Squid won't even save you much bandwidth.  These days it's best used as the foundation for squidGuard if you need to do URL filtering.

[maverick_slo]

+1

I only use it to cache AV updatest and install files (MSI)…

[GomezAddams]

I'd put ESX on the hardware (ESX should support the Intel NICs in the Jetway) and run pfsense as a virtual. Dump squid unless you want it as part of a URL filtering solution - and if you that that, run it on a separate virtual machine.

This still leaves you some capacity for other fun things like an asterisk pbx.