What router hardware do I need for a gigabit connection

[Hultner]

Which specs would I need on a router in order to get a 1000/1000Mbit/s throughput WAN-LAN? I understand that home routers won't handle this so I'll probably have to build something myself in order to get that through put.

I want something energy efficient (low power and low noise) preferably with passive cooling. I wonder if an Intel Atom 330 (1.6GHz Dual Core) will be enough to handle this connection or will I need something even beefier? Is pfSense the best os to run that scales best over multiple cores? How well does it even scale.

I've checked the pfSense wiki for information but the spec recommendations there are still the same as when I checked several years ago even though there's been tremendous development of CPUs.
It says

501+ Mbps - server class hardware with PCI-X or PCI-e network adapters. No less than 3.0 GHz CPU.

However there's a huge difference between a low IPC 3.0GHz CPU as the P4 and a high IPC 3.0 GHz CPU such as Sandy Bridge (even if you only run on one core). Also server class hardware a few years ago are weaker then desktop hardware today so it doesn't really tell me much.

There must be a few people here sitting with 1/1Gbps connections at home, what hardware do you guys run in order to not cap that connection?

Just to be clear I don't want something that will be able to barely hit 1000/1000Mbit/s with one connection but rather something that will be able to sustain those speeds with several connections (such as through the torrent-protocol with two hundred peers or so).

 

[nexusN]

Which specs would I need on a router in order to get a 1000/1000Mbit/s throughput WAN-LAN? I understand that home routers won't handle this so I'll probably have to build something myself in order to get that through put.

I want something energy efficient (low power and low noise) preferably with passive cooling. I wonder if an Intel Atom 330 (1.6GHz Dual Core) will be enough to handle this connection or will I need something even beefier? Is pfSense the best os to run that scales best over multiple cores? How well does it even scale.

I've checked the pfSense wiki for information but the spec recommendations there are still the same as when I checked several years ago even though there's been tremendous development of CPUs.
It says
However there's a huge difference between a low IPC 3.0GHz CPU as the P4 and a high IPC 3.0 GHz CPU such as Sandy Bridge (even if you only run on one core). Also server class hardware a few years ago are weaker then desktop hardware today so it doesn't really tell me much.

There must be a few people here sitting with 1/1Gbps connections at home, what hardware do you guys run in order to not cap that connection?

Just to be clear I don't want something that will be able to barely hit 1000/1000Mbit/s with one connection but rather something that will be able to sustain those speeds with several connections (such as through the torrent-protocol with two hundred peers or so).

Hi,
I have been reading some threads for a 1Gbps router in pfsense forum, here are something I can summerize:
1. Atom won't get the job done. D525 maxes out a NAT of 550Mbps, even D2700 would be only around 710Mbps. You'll have to get something more powerful for a high throughput router.

2. For adapter, an Intel PCI-E adapter will be sure enough.
PCI is theoretically fine but not sure if still enough after taking overhead into account, so try to avoid them.
Simply, you may get an onboard NIC with a PCI-E card like Intel Pro1000 CT.

After all, you may refer to my set up:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,45439.0.html
(please let me know if it's not suitable to post the link of another forum, I am sorry in the case)
I have built a router focusing on connecting Gbps WAN to LAN using a low end Sandy Bridge CPU and Intel Board and Lan card, you may also find some tests I have performed to check the performance and some measures to suppress power consumption.