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Author Topic: LAN setup  (Read 63482 times)

Chrysalis

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LAN setup
« on: November 16, 2016, 10:36:57 PM »

Following the post here http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=18942.msg337615#msg337615 which I do not want to hijack, I thought I would show my proposed new LAN which will be live when I built my PFSense device.

So The pfsense box is this baby http://amzn.eu/6Y5E48h
Ram and SSD are already here.  The SSD is way overkill but is a 60gig mini sata SSD (30gig is same price so 60gig is no brainer).

« Last Edit: November 16, 2016, 10:46:20 PM by Chrysalis »
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d2d4j

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #1 on: November 16, 2016, 11:06:28 PM »

Hi chrysalis

We use pfsense on some commercial setups, usually on dell poweredge xion dual quad core, 16gb ram, with raid 60 drives, and 2 x 4 1000mb nic cards, as well as onboard 4 1000 nic cards. Works lovely on multi nodes

We also use other firewalls and setups, but for home use, your setup looks ok

I do not use Sam knows box for anything other then Sam knows, and our setup is dynamic for sam knows, so it does not interfere with our IP range

Many thanks and I hope you don't mind my post, but please delete it if you want

Many thanks

John
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Chunkers

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2016, 09:52:18 AM »

Very cool, have always wanted to fiddle with pfsense but have never been brave enough as a primary device.

As a (relevant) aside, personally I have had bad experiences of the passive Celeron microPC's, in my case the Asrock Beebox N3000 which has problems with heat dissipation under any kind of load and also very poor wireless and bluetooth performance - admittedly I was running Windows 10 on it and using it as a HTPC.  I have since switched it to LibreElec and it is much better but I have had to remove the wireless cards and use an external dongle instead and also take out 2.5" disk to keep it cool.

Yours is quite likely a better design that the Beebox and i imagine will be running at a low load but worth having a snoop round perhaps:)

o7

Chunks
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skyeci

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #3 on: November 17, 2016, 10:50:33 AM »

love my pfsense box.

I use  pc engines apu2 with 4gb ram and 30gb mini ssd. Works a treat with my sky fibre pro too, supports sky IPV6 along with  open vpn works really well as I got my static IP before sky stopped offering them.
Its 12volt as well so low power use.

Spec http://pcengines.ch/apu2c4.htm 
CPU AMD Embedded G series GX-412TC, 1 GHz quad Jaguar core with 64 bit and AES-NI support, 32K data + 32K instruction cache per core, shared 2MB L2 cache.

Not seen it break into a sweat yet..

Purchased it from LinITX in the UK - came pre built and pre-installed with a full version of Pfsense.

if anyone wants sky settings PM me should you fancy having a go..

sorted  :cool:
« Last Edit: November 17, 2016, 11:17:45 AM by skyeci »
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Ronski

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #4 on: November 17, 2016, 08:41:43 PM »

Tempted to build one of these, although would probably go for what skieci has, but purchase direct from PCEngines for just over half the price that LinITX want, although that would mean I have to work out how to install Pfsense
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underzone

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #5 on: November 17, 2016, 08:45:27 PM »

All the info you will ever need in this series of vids:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agieD5uiwYY&list=PLE726R7YUJTePGvo0Zga2juUBxxFTH4Bk

 ;)
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skyeci

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #6 on: November 17, 2016, 08:49:33 PM »

Tempted to build one of these, although would probably go for what skieci has, but purchase direct from PCEngines for just over half the price that LinITX want, although that would mean I have to work out how to install Pfsense

I have a usb install stick I made here with serial console support install if you want to borrow it :)

I was having so much packet loss with my old asus I just needed a next day solution to resolve the issues quickly  ::) I did run it on my i7 with 2 lan cards pre purchae - worked just fine but the power consumption was a bit crazy as it was my gaming pc..
« Last Edit: November 17, 2016, 08:55:04 PM by skyeci »
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Chrysalis

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #7 on: November 18, 2016, 02:09:38 AM »

Tempted to build one of these, although would probably go for what skieci has, but purchase direct from PCEngines for just over half the price that LinITX want, although that would mean I have to work out how to install Pfsense

I read your post and I was thinking hmmmm.

Because I did check the price of the APU2 before (someone else recommended it to me) was over £200 hence what I got instead, but then thought some more about your post and you mentioned direct, and indeed I noticed the buy direct link and its significantly cheaper than the reseller and cheaper then what I have ordered so is the better choice.  Sort of feel an idiot now but I will persist with what I ordered.  What I ordered does come with the casing and is more compact so its not a loss all round.
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Ronski

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #8 on: November 18, 2016, 06:28:50 AM »

Thanks Underzone for the link, and skyeci for the offer - I'll see how I get on.

Chrysalis, I only stumbled upon the buy direct option because I was reading this thread and someone asked how he got it so cheap. You can also buy a case from them as well, in a choice of colours. I prefer the looks of yours, but the APU2 has three NICS, so if I ever got a second line it could load balance as well. I'll probably go back to using the HG612 as the modem, my upload is now down to 4192kbps, whilst D/S is now at 50412kbps, and I know the HG612 will give me more upload.
« Last Edit: November 18, 2016, 06:31:42 AM by Ronski »
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Chrysalis

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #9 on: November 18, 2016, 02:38:38 PM »

The annoyance with mine is it has realtek nic's and the FreeBSD drivers for realtek are not great, I will probably run them with offloading disabled as my experience dictates.  Whilst the APU2 nic's are all intel.  The cpu on the box i am buying however will be fine without checksum offloading its easily powerful enough.

The APU2 is also more future proof as you said with the extra NIC but not just that but also the extra mini pci-e connectivity on board for future addon cards.
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skyeci

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #10 on: November 18, 2016, 03:43:37 PM »

Thats also why I went for apu2, 3 Intel lan ports  :)

Chunkers

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #11 on: November 18, 2016, 06:49:13 PM »

All the info you will ever need in this series of vids:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agieD5uiwYY&list=PLE726R7YUJTePGvo0Zga2juUBxxFTH4Bk

 ;)

These are great, thanks for the link.  I am starting to get excited about the possibility of building my own router :)
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underzone

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #12 on: November 18, 2016, 09:13:03 PM »

Yeah me too. When you watch the vid and he says how most routers are 400MHz and 128Mb RAM it makes you realise how good a standalone box @2GHz with 8GB and an SSD could be!
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Chunkers

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #13 on: November 19, 2016, 09:42:00 PM »

Thanks Underzone for the link, and skyeci for the offer - I'll see how I get on.

Chrysalis, I only stumbled upon the buy direct option because I was reading this thread and someone asked how he got it so cheap.

I don't want to highjack this thread but have a couple of questions based on your comment and reading through the thread as I really like the idea of getting one, at £140 it seems like a good deal as the 3 NIC version could load balance my dual WAN's:

  • Do you need a VAT number to buy this stuff direct?
  • One of the posters in the thread talk about how the unit lacks power - would a Celeron unit like Chrysalis is buying be a more fkexible option?
Feel free to feedback if this needs to broken out as a separate thread, I am pretty sure I will be pricing up and getting some hardware for this myself

Chunks
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Chrysalis

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Re: LAN setup
« Reply #14 on: November 20, 2016, 03:03:28 AM »

My unit has more cpu grunt, but my opinion is the apu2 also has enough grunt comfortably to do its job, both have cpus way more powerful than current high end retail consumer routers.

If I have to I will add intel nic's via the mini pcie connector or even buy an apu2 at a later date, hopefully I am fine on the realtek's tho.

As a comparison my ac68 is running at 1200mhz (overclocked, 800 is stock), but it has no aesni acceleration and has worse performance per clock than both systems.

A big factor in my decision is that the dev of the firmware on my asuswrt has started to imply he is not willing to do bug fixes that only I have found (he is moving into only fixing for the masses mode) and that a lot of the software behind asuswrt is reliant on very old code due to a locked down closed source driver from broadcom.  I had to manually apply some workarounds to get ipv6 fully stable on my sky connection, and the dev refuses to even acknowledge its broken so that was the trigger point for me. Is a shame the unit I have ordered is using realtek nic's as otherwise I would have considered it perfect (assuming one is ok using a separate WAP and gigabit switch).

Bear in mind regarding the number of network ports, pfsense has very good vlan support, it even has a wizard when you first boot it guiding you through vlan setup, this is all done in mind that alot of people will be running pfsense on devices with limited ethernet ports and can allow things like bonded connections to run via a single ethernet cable, its how I managed to as an example share my wan with lan access to my billion 8800nl stats over one cable.
« Last Edit: November 20, 2016, 03:07:53 AM by Chrysalis »
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