pfSense box or Edgerouter lite?

[sfx2000]

Better to do a dedicated AP (or a Router configured as AP) than trying to use a wireless adapter with PFSense..

 

[coxhaus]

Better to do a dedicated AP (or a Router configured as AP) than trying to use a wireless adapter with PFSense..

Yes I am still going to use my 3 Cisco WAP321 units on 5GHz.

pfSense is going to be an in and out box. I have 2 Intel Gig ports built-in. I will probably add SNORT but not much else. This should translate to a NUC box fairly well. I need to figure out how much ram is enough. Every stick cost you watts.

My layer 3 switch will be feeding pfSense at line speed.

 

[System Error Message]

It may be possible to use low voltage ram sticks, depends on the CPU compatibility as the memory controller is on the CPU.

 

[sfx2000]

Yes I am still going to use my 3 Cisco WAP321 units on 5GHz.

pfSense is going to be an in and out box. I have 2 Intel Gig ports built-in. I will probably add SNORT but not much else. This should translate to a NUC box fairly well. I need to figure out how much ram is enough. Every stick cost you watts.

My layer 3 switch will be feeding pfSense at line speed.

Cool - shouldn't need over 2GB RAM on the pfSense box, but smaller sticks are getting to be more expensive these days for some odd reason - so 4GB should be plenty...

 

[coxhaus]

I am getting a hardware error with my USB DVD drive trying to load pfSense.. It boots fine and I get the first menu but when FreeBSD try's to mount the USB DVD drive it errors out. I posted something out there.

The is an old true Intel 5000 server motherboard. I currently have Untangle in bridge mode on it. I have had Microsoft server previously. It is strange pfSense will not install.

I am thinking 4GB for memory also. I also saw the NUC may have hardware issues right now. I guess the new hardware. I may have to wait.

I think I am going back to Untangle in router mode if I don't hear anything soon.

Time for another beer.

I wonder if pfSense would install under Hyper V and bypass this problem. Its going to take a lot more RAM.

 

[sfx2000]

if you can get a lightweight install into BSD, you can mount the ISO from there...

Alt - not sure if the 5K has ILO, but that's another option to mount the disk image via NFS perhaps...

 

[coxhaus]

BSD is beyond my skills. I worked on IBM mainframes for the first 15 years no BSD.

 

[coxhaus]

I have success. I used Win32Disk and made a 4 GIG image stick. It now installs. I am not sure why? But I am glade I made progress.

The USB DVD drive has a problem. Seems to work on everything but pfSense. I stopped buying DVD drives a long time ago and only have this one I move from machine to machine for at least the last 4 years.

 

[System Error Message]

usb sticks work better and faster. I havent heard of hardware issues relating to NUCs, i see them being used a lot as thin clients.

 

[Nullity]

I have success. I used Win32Disk and made a 4 GIG image stick. It now installs. I am not sure why? But I am glade I made progress.

The USB DVD drive has a problem. Seems to work on everything but pfSense. I stopped buying DVD drives a long time ago and only have this one I move from machine to machine for at least the last 4 years.

Might it be that the USB flash image used BIOS boot methods, while the ISO used EUFI, or vice versa?

I had troubles with the installation of pfSense as well, though I forget exactly what the problem was. FreeBSD/pfSense probably have the best open-source TCP/IP stack, but in quite a few ways... the systems are annoyingly outdated.

Anyway, it only has to install once.

 

[coxhaus]

I have pfSense installed with static routes and firewall rules for static routes. This thing is doggie. I am trying to figure out tunning. I run DSLreports speedtest and I only get around 200 meg or less. It seems like it is running fast Ethernet full duplex. The connections in pfSense show 1000 full duplex on each, The CPU never goes above 4% mostly on 0 but if I run the speedtest it goes to 4%. I am not going to recommend pfSense any more if I can't figure out how to tune it. Maybe there is too much IPv6 code in it.

Any ideas on tunning this thing? I am asking on the pfSense forum as well.

 

[Nullity]

You should not need to do any tuning, especially considering that the CPU is never being over-loaded.

What NICs do you have? emX (em0, em1, etc)?

 

[coxhaus]

I have em0 for WAN and em1 for LAN with a single IP address no DHCP. Some how the code is running fast Ethernet even though the dashboard is showing 1000baseT<full-duplex>. None of my speed test quit reach 200 megabit. When I run a speedtest my CPU only goes to 4%.
Here is my system doing nothing.

PS
I looked up my chipset on FreeBSD 10.2 hardware list and I don't see my NICs listed. They are Intel 82563EB. Have they started pulling support for Intel NICs? I thought you were golden if you had Intel NICs.

 

[Nullity]

I have em0 for WAN and em1 for LAN with a single IP address no DHCP. Some how the code is running fast Ethernet even though the dashboard is showing 1000baseT<full-duplex>. None of my speed test quit reach 200 megabit. When I run a speedtest my CPU only goes to 4%.
Here is my system doing nothing.

PS
I looked up my chipset on FreeBSD 10.2 hardware list and I don't see my NICs listed. They are Intel 82563EB. Have they started pulling support for Intel NICs? I thought you were golden if you had Intel NICs.

If it it recognized by the em driver, you should be golden (at least from the NIC perspective).

Have you tried downloading from some super-fast site like kernel.org or something Google hosts?

My ISP has a ftp server with 1GByte files that I use for speedtests.

 

[sfx2000]

I have em0 for WAN and em1 for LAN with a single IP address no DHCP. Some how the code is running fast Ethernet even though the dashboard is showing 1000baseT<full-duplex>. None of my speed test quit reach 200 megabit.

<snip>

I looked up my chipset on FreeBSD 10.2 hardware list and I don't see my NICs listed. They are Intel 82563EB. Have they started pulling support for Intel NICs? I thought you were golden if you had Intel NICs.

Hm... should work, might have to go into the shell and check your ifconfig options there... BSD there behaves similar to linux, even though the names change...

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?em(4)

 

[coxhaus]

If it it recognized by the em driver, you should be golden (at least from the NIC perspective).

Have you tried downloading from some super-fast site like kernel.org or something Google hosts?

My ISP has a ftp server with 1GByte files that I use for speedtests.

DSLReports Speedtest has never given me any problems. I ran it right before I pulled out the RV320 and replaced it with pfSense with the same IP.

 

[coxhaus]

Hm... should work, might have to go into the shell and check your ifconfig options there... BSD there behaves similar to linux, even though the names change...

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?em(4)

Did you notice the list they have 8254 and 8257 but no 8256. I have 82563EB so does that mean it's not supported?

 

[coxhaus]

I dug around up in my attic and found an Intel FW82546GB dual port old server card. Do think I should try a reinstall with the dual port card? Some how I need to come up with the offload the drivers part without killing my system.

I wish pfsense would give me some sense of direction. It seems hard to get forum support any more.

 

[System Error Message]

if you are installing it virtually, why not give the NIC to pfsense and see if it works assuming pfsense already has the NIC drivers. There should be a way to install drivers assuming you can find open sourced or available for the OS.

 

[coxhaus]

I think running in a VM will eat extra RAM and use more electricity. It also will add complexity. I think I am going to stay native unless I decide to add a second VM for a UTM function. Then one machine is better than 2. Besides If I can't solve this I am not going to run pfSense. It's running doggie for me right now. It needs to be quicker than my RV320 router.