Looking for ideas on what hardware to use for a pfsense router. Would like enough power for speed and some of the addons like the firewall antivirus and run some personal vpn off it.
Pic is the Alix kit. Costs about 200 a little less. Good speed but idk how much hard drive space it leaves after software and addons for a cache.
It still shouldnt need that much hardware. Anyone already running this?
What are you looking for?
>>47161753
What hardware are you using? Im about to buy this Alix kit just to be done with it but @ 200 for it I was wondering if I couldnt do better for the money.
It's hard to look past that thing for a router/firewall.
3xGigabit Ethernet puts it ahead of anything that isn't a specific purpose single-board.
It only consumes 6W, so it beats a spare rig with a full x86 CPU.
You're limited by the 1GHz dual core, but for small networks that's more than enough.
The Hardware is an Alix 2D13.
I am running it as a basic firewall/router for network separation. The internet connection goes through another router, which I cannot get rid of because of the shitty VOIP setup by my provider. So I have a double NAT, with port forwarding on both routers for torrenting.
The router is as stable as you could want it to be, never had any issues apart from self-inflicted stupidity (DNS server was not listening ton 127.0.0.1, which would make the software updater fail without a hint on what was wrong). Would buy again.
I have had issues with cheap router before, they tend to die slowly. Bought this one in 2012.
What I am doing with it is pretty basic, as you can see by the CPU and memory consumption.
If you have any additional questions I may be able to answer them, but I have no recommendations for other devices.
>>47162128
Forgot to mention, I have an RB951G-2HnD AccessPoint, which could work as a router as well. If you do not need the pfSense packages, and want a basic router, this could be a cheaper option. Gigabit ports, gigabit routing, pretty nice feature set.
>>47162226
>>47162128
Thx Ill just grab this then.
It really is nice with that power usage and small space.
>>47162309
Which one do you mean? They are both pretty small, do not use much power, and can both be used for VPN. Not sure about the antivirus you mentioned, but I ould not put this on a router (cannot intercept https; if it can, it will break https)
>>47162356
http://store.netgate.com/ALIX2D13-DIY-Kit-Black-Unassembled-P172.aspx
one of these
pfsense allows some plugins also one of them is a antivirus that works inside the router on any machine passing through it. It will stop and warn you if you are downloading something infected.
>>47162478
From your link:
>EOL NOTICE: The AMD Geode LX800 CPU features in this system will EOL in 2015. For this reason we high recommend you purchase the APU2 or APU4 system instead, which is the follow on modern multi-core replacement CPU/system with Gigabit ethernet NICs.
As I said before, I would not rely on antivirus in the router.
You could block domains with known malware (most ad networks, add a few hosts) and be mostly fine. Still, put something on your client computers as well.
Why would you buy a $200 kit when you could throw an expansion card in a normal small form factor PC for a tenth the cost?
>>47162736
Please show me a 20$ computer that will do gigabit routing, be small, quiet (no vents, no moving parts), and not consume an obscene amount of electricity for nearly no performance at all.
>>47162776
flea markets, ebay, craigslist, freecycle, christ anon have a little resourcefulness.
A wide diameter fan set to a low rpm won't make much noise, but I have no idea why you're expecting no vents. Thats retarded.
Obscene amounts of electricity, as well? Nigga you aren't shoving crossfired AMD GPUs in there. Fucking pennies
>>47162831
Yes, flea market. Old hardware, at least a 300 watt psu with godawful efficiency, condensators the shape of a melon.
No vents = no maintenance. Not having to clean that shit out every few months. And I like it quiet, which cheap PCs almost never are.
>>47162934
I really wished /g/ was an actual technology board and not morons like you
Just buy a prebuild, sounds more like down your street.
>>47163003
What are the benefits, other than cost, of using an old tower PC as a router/firewall?
>>47163003
From someone like you, i take moron as a compliment.
Can you do anything apart from insulting people?
>>47163003
Not everyone needs to scrap every penny they can. For some people the time invested in finding old hard ware to do this job isnt worth it.
If you buy one of these you get everything you need in a small little for factor and no fan heat from it.
If you are just fucking around with pfsense on your own yes an old computer might make sense especially if you already have something lying around.
I use a core2duo thinkcentre for my pfsense. it's got 2gigs of ram, 1.5 of which is dedicated to squid cache. It also runs snort which is great, and I have an ipsec tunnel set up to another thinkcentre (spec'd exactly the same) at a different location.
more processing power = faster vpn throughput.
>>47163085
Please tell me this is from a VM. Otherwise it is ridiculously overpowered.
>>47163150
hurrdurr forgot pic
>>47163150
Snort. Yes. This would make sense, and probably be too much to handle for the ALIX. It might work for a small home network, but I am not sure.
>>47163213
These new Alix come with 4Gb of ram and say you can stick an ssd inside them to make snort work on them.
Probably cost more then the 200 starting model but it could work.
>>47163213
this is what my cpu looks like running snort on the core2 at my home network. as you can see, it barely uses any cpu. At a small office or something like that I'm sure it would be more.
>>47163213
I rebooted my box last wedensday for the update, but as you can see, squid will happily use up all avaliable ram to store it's cache. Good times.
>>47163157
It's only temporary. My old ITX-mobo died last week. I have also free electricity.
>>47163234
In this case, I would opt for something with a bit more power. The ThinkCentre sounds perfect, otherwise something like a zbox, brix or something like that. If you have RAM and HDD lying around, it would even be cheaper.
>>47163254
Alright, you tried it, I have not. I will shut up now.
>>47163316
>The ThinkCentre sounds perfect, otherwise something like a zbox, brix or something like that. If you have RAM and HDD lying around, it would even be cheaper.
I dont know which thinkcentre's your talking about that small.
The zbox and brick are closer to the idea but they only have one network port and I dont know if it can do wireless if you were to get an antenna.
Anyone running a wireless-N card in their pfsense box?
>>47163708
You are right,I thought about something like a ThinkCentre M83 Tiny.
A Shuttle DS437 would have 2 LAN ports, and a WLAN module. No idea if that would work with pfSense.
>>47163274
>free electricity
>college/university pleb
>live with parents still which means its not free
>stealing power
I'm going to elect option number 2 you parasite
Is there any hardware out there that can replace the actual modem? Mine has a coaxial coming in from the wall as it through my cable company comcast.
Is that even possible I havent thought about it before.
Atom boards are pretty nice, low power and typically more expandable if you decide you want it to do more later.
>>47164183
You know there are apartments and other places to live that don't meter individual tenants' power, right?
>>47164459
Not in any civilized country I've lived.
>not the US
>>47164401
Im sure you can get a card for it but you would need to be doing it in a mini pc or something built to take it.
>>47161015
I have the APU1D4 with a 128GB mSATA SSD. I run Untangle on it.
It runs well. If I put PFSense or OpenBSD on it, it'd likely run a bit faster, but I have licenses for some of the Untangle stuff, and it does what I want it to.
>>47164401
No, but you can just buy your own modem.
>>47164519
Most higher-end places here don't meter utility usage because they're already charging you a fuckton
>Free electricity, water, and heating
>Have to pay to use washing machine
>Americlap landlords in charge of making sense
>>47164519
A lot of places will include utilities with rent.
