Building a high-perfomance router

[hottuna]

Hi!
I've been looking into buying a high-performance home-network router. What I'd need is a 100/100 wan capable, gigabit router that can handle massive amounts of tcp-connections. Massive as in at least 2000.
I haven't found anything suitable, products aimed at commercial networks are generally to expensive. In the same way every home-network oriented product I've seen stats of is way underpowered.

So, my idea is to build a router, but finding hardware with decent performance, dual gigabit NICs, low-ish electricity usage and a pricetag beneath 430$ has been a challenge.
Performance suggestions for pfSense which is what Im planning to run, is a 1ghz CPU and 1gb ram for the load Im planning to have.

I've looked at Intel Atom boards, but havent found cheap alternatives with multiple NICs.

Do you guys have any suggestions?

 

[battousai831]

How about this?

Heres a quick build from newegg that would work well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148231
80gb hdd (smallest i could find that was sata) $35

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157153
Solid mobo with gigabit lan and a pci-e slot and intergrated graphics $55

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106033
second NIC. gigabit, intel. (i went with the intel because there were some no names for less but chances are it will be more compatable.) its PCI -e so full gigabit speed (no pci slow down) $30

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151085
80plus certified power supply that has more thna enough wattage for this machine. $38

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211288
2gb of ddr2 800. $49

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103698
single core amd @ 2.7 ghz, plenty of power for a router. (i doubt a dual core would be of any help) $36

Add in maybe 40 for a decent case and use a flash drive to install the OS instead of a CD drive (or use an old one laying around) and it comes out to be: about 300 depending on the case you pick. The parts i listed came out to be $255 with shipping!

Hope that helps!

 

[hottuna]

Heres a quick build from newegg that would work well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148231
80gb hdd (smallest i could find that was sata) $35

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157153
Solid mobo with gigabit lan and a pci-e slot and intergrated graphics $55

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106033
second NIC. gigabit, intel. (i went with the intel because there were some no names for less but chances are it will be more compatable.) its PCI -e so full gigabit speed (no pci slow down) $30

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151085
80plus certified power supply that has more thna enough wattage for this machine. $38

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211288
2gb of ddr2 800. $49

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103698
single core amd @ 2.7 ghz, plenty of power for a router. (i doubt a dual core would be of any help) $36

Add in maybe 40 for a decent case and use a flash drive to install the OS instead of a CD drive (or use an old one laying around) and it comes out to be: about 300 depending on the case you pick. The parts i listed came out to be $255 with shipping!

Hope that helps!

Thanks battousai831!

You've obviously put a lot of effort into this list and I'm grateful, but I'm looking for lower power consumption (electricity is expensive) and a smaller formfactor if possible.

I probably would do away with the hdd and run it from a flash-memory of some kind, due to reliability issues of hdd.

The Intel pci-e NIC seems like a very good idea, since I might get a gigabit internetconnection in a year or two..
The upgradeability of a non-compact formfactor is appealing aswell.

 

[battousai831]

No prob.

You could boost the effective of the build by getting this processor instead: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103188

I doubt the system would draw more than 60 watts during usage.

i completely understand wanting something smaller. That mobo is about as small of a form factor without diving into prebuilt systems and atoms. Atoms wont be much more efficient than the sempron, because of their terrible intel chipsets.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Intel-Atom-Efficient,1981-7.html

The processor i linked you is a lot better than the one they used back then to compare to the atom. Its 45nm and uses a lot less power.

 

[occamsrazor]

Check this Fit-PC2i just announced......

http://www.fit-pc.com/web/fit-pc2/fit-pc2i-specifications/

Like the existing Fit-PC2 model, but with dual-gigabit. They say available from Jan 2010, but no pricing yet, although you can maybe get a rough idea from the old model pricing... Looks pretty sweet to me...