Post your Smoothie/ipcop/etc. specs

[Phantum]

Anyone think this would be a nice pFsense box?

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101262

 

[keenan]

Anyone think this would be a nice pFsense box?

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101262

I have one nearly identical in the field, but I built it from components didn't buy the barebones. Only problem with it is the crappy Realtek NICs. They work, but you'll get basically no support from the pfSense folks, and they are commonly a source of problems. I would suggest buying the PCIe riser card and an Intel dual NIC, which will add about $100 to your cost (what I did) and you may as well get the MSI IM-945GSE-A instead.

 

[novadude]

You should take a look at this one instead: http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/5015/SYS-5015A-PHF.cfm

It's based on the D510, has dual integrated intel lan chips and uses a much better chipset (uses a lot less power). These should be available soon.

 

[keenan]

Very nice indeed! Provantage seems to have them available for order: http://www.provantage.com/supermicro-sys-5015a-phf~7SUP91RC.htm

 

[Phantum]

I have one nearly identical in the field, but I built it from components didn't buy the barebones. Only problem with it is the crappy Realtek NICs. They work, but you'll get basically no support from the pfSense folks, and they are commonly a source of problems. I would suggest buying the PCIe riser card and an Intel dual NIC, which will add about $100 to your cost (what I did) and you may as well get the MSI IM-945GSE-A instead.

The only problem I've had so far with pfsense and realtek adapters is a "short cable fix." Is that what you're referring to or something else?

 

[keenan]

The only problem I've had so far with pfsense and realtek adapters is a "short cable fix." Is that what you're referring to or something else?

No. The 're0: watchdog timeout' problem that is ubiquitous with almost every kind of cheap NIC. Realtek, Marvell, nForce all suffer from this problem when under load. Some systems seem to be more problematic than others, but it's very common. Not an all-out failure, but the interface will usually stop passing traffic for 30s or so and then return. They also consume a lot more CPU than a decent NIC would when passing the same traffic.

 

[Phantum]

Alright, well thank you all for your suggestions and comments. After a weeks worth of research I've decided to go with this;

The ServerMicro SuperServer 5015A-PHF
And 1GB of Kingston DDR2 667 SO-DIMM to start out with. I'll probably get 2 eventually.

Any other thoughts, questions and/or comments?

 

[keenan]

Very good choice.

 

[MooCow]

whats the problem with realtek RTL 8110/8169 adapters again? I think I'm experiencing some issue with them. Everything was working fine for a month with this new MSI dual LAN motherboard. I got optimum boost to get a bit more upload bandwidth. I then gradually started seeding more torrents to a total of 50. I upped the max number of incoming connections to 512 in uTorrent. Then modified WinXP to patch the .sys file to allow more max concurrent connections. This all worked out very well for a while.

But now I have this problem, my connection to the internet was not stable, sometimes I'd get timeout errors when accessing webpages, then the connection would restore, I'd load the page, but it would load SLOW. This was never a problem with my previous IPCOP builds, with a 3com NIC and a Netgear NIC. Then again, I didn't have optimum boost back then so there wasn't as much traffic. This slowdown problem affects ALL machines on the network, not just my desktop, so I know that the problem is not isolated to just my machine, it has to be something on the IPCOP setup.

Like I said, my connection would timeout, then it would come back on after 10-30 seconds, it would be slow, and this process would repeat itself for a good half hour before things returned to normal.

IPCOP should be able to handle this, I've done this before but with completely different NIC chipsets.

 

[keenan]

Are you doing any QoS? Everyone should be aware that torrent traffic can easily cripple a home cable connection, and that could be what you're seeing.

Try installing the Realtek drivers directly from Realtek for Linux. I don't know how easy that will be with IPcop but they seem to work much better. The FreeBSD driver is pretty flaky and you'll often get timeouts under heavy traffic, the NIC will have to be reinitialized, it ends up being 30s downtime or more. I haven't seen this on Linux, but since I avoid these NICs like the plague I don't have a ton of experience with them. I do have one machine that's been stable and performs fairly well with the Realtek-supplied drivers though.

 

[MooCow]

Actually yes I was experimenting with QoS and I forgot to erase some of the rules, so I have most of them turned off for now. Hopefully this will solve some of the issues.

I would be very disappointed to see my cable connection / IPCOP router not be able to handle a lot of bit torrent traffic. Thats half the reason why I use IPCOP...

 

[keenan]

IPcop should be fine with BT traffic I think. I don't have any experience with it specifically, but the Linux IP stack is certainly capable of it, so I don't see why IPcop wouldn't be. Without QoS though you can't solve the problems with BitTorrent as it's simply a saturation problem, and a 'problem' with the buffering inside the cable modem (that is designed to increase speed, not keep latency low under heavy traffic). With proper QoS you should be able to overcome that issue, though it is also possible your NICs are the problem.

 

[MooCow]

I believe removing a ton of QoS rules has cleared up the problem, I was experimenting with QoS and had about a dozen lines to test out. I guess a rule of thumb is to have the least number of services set for QoS?

 

[keenan]

Setting up QoS properly is something of an art and really requires a good awareness of how it works and what your traffic profile looks like to do well. I don't know enough about IPcop to really speak to setting it up specifically, but generally the number of rules you have isn't all that important, what is important is making sure as much traffic as possible gets classified properly and then setting up the queues to get the best possible out of your connection.

A common problem is over-estimating the upstream bandwidth available, it's critical that this is properly estimated so that the upstream device (ie. the cable modem) doesn't end up with full buffers that have to empty before high priority traffic can make it onto the wire. Modern cable modems etc. often have buffers that can take 500ms or even longer to empty.

But this thread isn't for that

 

[MooCow]

Yeah thanks for the info, I know I was starting to derail the thread a little bit, so I'll stop here

 

[iGamer]

new PFSense Server

<pic will eventually go here>

Circa 2004 Compaq PC

2.8GHz Intel Celeron
1GB PC2100 DDR SDRAM
80GB Samsung HDD
3x Intel Pro/100 S NICs

Its way overkill, but meh...

 

[jtg1993]

I setup a new pfsense firewall a while ago too,

Compaq case
Intel mobo
512mb PC133
p4 1.7ghz
Onboard 10/100 nic for WAN
Dlink pci 10/100 nic for LAN
WD 80GB ide hdd
Pfsense 1.2.3-RC3 (to lazy to upgrade and its working fine so no point fixing something that isn't broken)

 

[I3roknI3ottle]

Dell Box

Intel Celeron 1.1GHz
384MB Ram
2GB CF Drive
3xIntel Pro 10/100 S NICS
pfSense 1.2.3 Release

 

[unwantedSN]

What do you guys think about using this for a home pfsense build.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856107043&cm_re=jetway-_-56-107-043-_-Product

I'd also add a gig of ram and and few intel nics and a cheap laptop drive.

 

[keenan]

I've seen a few reports of Jetway boards failing prematurely on the pfSense boards, and given the price I'm not at all surprised. Also there's only one PCI slot and it doesn't include a riser to match the horizontal slots on the case.

 

[munkle]

Dell
1.7or 1.4 ghz.
512mb ram.
128mb cf (monowall)
Dlink and 3com nic.

 

[CaseyBlackburn]

- Home Network -
Watchguard Firebox x700
6x100MB NICs
512MB Ram
2GB CF
pfSense 1.2.3 embedded

- My University Network -
(specs coming soon)

 

[Angry]

Trying out FreeNAS
Asus HP board
Celeron 1.3ghz
512mb ram
1x 80gb IDE (OS drive with data partition)
1x 120gb IDE
2x 160gb IDE


Hoping to add 2x 1.5tb drives with a PCI SATA II card. Hopefully the CPU can handle it, if not I have a socket A rig I can use, just need PC3200 DDR1 (nf2 ultra board). But its loud and I got this system down to just a case fan blowing air on the cpu heatsink, all I hear is the hard drives when they spin up.

 

[dmolter]

Its extremely overkill, but it is a rackmount and it only set me back $30 on ebay

Dual amd opteron 246's @ 2.0 ghz.
2 gigs of ecc ddr 3200 memory
intel pro 1000 quad port nic
40 gig western digital ide harddrive
Pfsense 1.2.3

 

[MAFRI]

A Dell PowerEdge 2650

2x 3,06Ghz Xeon
4x 1GB DDR1 ECC .reg
4x 73GB SCA2
Dell Perc 3 Qi 265MB
Intel PCI-X 133 Dual Port NIC
And some other Stuff...


I used it as Gateway ist Astaro on it.
Today I use it with VmWare ESXi 3.5


MAFRI

 

[MooCow]

Damn that thing is a beast with a low profile. Nice.

How much power does it draw?

 

[MAFRI]

idle ~190W
load ~ 300W
full load ~ 380W

But today I'm using a DryTek Vigor 3300
You can see here: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1035645768&postcount=1415

MAFRI

 

[unhappy_mage]

Dual p3-866, 2 gigs ecc ram, 80 gb laptop disk for boot, 4*750 mirrored. Runs solaris 10, does ipfilter NAT at 100 megabits on the internet side and serves files over NFS at a gigabit on the local side. Also runs torrents, httpd, dhcp, DNS, etc etc etc.

A few upgrades here and there, and now I'm running PFsense on a completely different set of hardware, with fileserving duties on a different board in the same box (see 10TB showoff thread in data storage).

PFsense is running on a MSI Industrial IM-945GC with an Intel Atom 230, 512MB of memory, a sata dongle, and a dual-port Intel gigE PCI-X card. Performance is quite good with the Intel card, up to 100 megabits to and from the Internet. The onboard Realteks were disappointing in that regard.

 

[MooCow]

PFsense is running on a MSI Industrial IM-945GC with an Intel Atom 230, 512MB of memory, a sata dongle, and a dual-port Intel gigE PCI-X card. Performance is quite good with the Intel card, up to 100 megabits to and from the Internet. The onboard Realteks were disappointing in that regard.

Dude... I have the same board. The Realteks stop routing once every 2 months. I have to do a hard reset of the machine...

I have seen a lot of low profile dual port Intel NICs. Does PCI-X realy work in the PCI slot? Can you link me to where you got yours? Is it relatively cheap? I am dying for a dual port low profile intel nic.

 

[CaseyBlackburn]

Dude... I have the same board. The Realteks stop routing once every 2 months. I have to do a hard reset of the machine...

I have seen a lot of low profile dual port Intel NICs. Does PCI-X realy work in the PCI slot? Can you link me to where you got yours? Is it relatively cheap? I am dying for a dual port low profile intel nic.

Do you get watchdog timeouts on the realteks with pfSense? What version of pfSense are you running?

 

[keenan]

I have seen a lot of low profile dual port Intel NICs. Does PCI-X realy work in the PCI slot? Can you link me to where you got yours? Is it relatively cheap? I am dying for a dual port low profile intel nic.

Works fine. I'm running the Intel Atom board with an Intel dual port 1000/MT card. Got it from eBay for like $30 new in box, comes with a low profile bracket you can swap in.

 

[unhappy_mage]

Dude... I have the same board. The Realteks stop routing once every 2 months. I have to do a hard reset of the machine...

I have seen a lot of low profile dual port Intel NICs. Does PCI-X realy work in the PCI slot? Can you link me to where you got yours? Is it relatively cheap? I am dying for a dual port low profile intel nic.

I got mine on eBay. It's not the same seller, but there's one for $24 shipped now. It works just fine, albeit at a fairly low speed: you couldn't push more than half a gigabit through in one direction, despite the fact that the card could handle full gigabit in both directions.

I wish I could have gotten a pci express card, but I couldn't find an adapter from mini-pci-express to a normal sized slot or a wired Ethernet adapter in the mini form factor. Oh well, this works fine.

 

[centurion]

Anyone think this would be a nice pFsense box?

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101262

I have that server (though when I bought mine, it was a combo deal and not pre-built), and it works perfectly using smoothwall. I tried using Endian but it wasn't detecting the cards, and as it turned out there wasn't built-in drivers. I did find a guide to downloading and compiling the drivers, but I was feeling lazy.

I've had mine in production at home on a 50/10 Comcast connection and have had no problems whatsoever with the Realtek NIC's.

 

[MooCow]

Ok so I got this Intel Dual LAN port PCI-X card off ebay for $17 shipped. It fits in my case. I also disabled the onboard Realtek in the bios, but it only disables ONE realtek port, the other Realtek lan port is still active and I can't find a way to disable both.

Then, IPCOP only detects the Intel card as a single port card. So right now I took it out and still using both realteks cause I'm having a configuration problem

I just taped off the extra PCI connectors cause it might touch the power / reset/ LED jumper pins on the motherboard.

This is how the oversized card fits in my IPCOP case, it works... just gotta to some ghetto rigging to secure it in place. Remember this is a PCI-X card, so its just a tad longer than PCI.

I put the fan over an average area of where the heat is generated, and there is one chip on the board that gets moderately hot/warm but has no heatsink so thats why its off to the left a bit. The fan is new, and I removed the fan speed controller for a blue 3 pin resistor wire to keep it at a slower fixed speed. It certainly reduces clutter! I used to have a zalman fan speed controller "box" tucked in there.

Can anyone help me with IPCOP? Its not auto detecting both ports on the intel card, one auto assigns to Green on the realtek, and then RED gets the INTEL, and I even tried to manually set it but it gave me an error

This is as far as I get

 

[keenan]

You should start a new thread, I don't use IPcop, but I'll see what I can do for you.

Can you get the output of 'lspci -nn', 'dmesg' and 'ifconfig -a' on the console and post those in your new thread?

 

[MooCow]

Ok will do I'll start a new thread in a bit.

 

[staticlag]

Norco 2U case,

ASUS DSBV-DX MB

2x Intel Xeon 5110 (1.6 gHz dual core, 1066 FSB) (passive 2U heatsinks)
2 GB FB ECC RAM


NICs-
2 Intel Onboard Gigabit
3 Intel PCI-X Gigabit
1 Intel PCI Gigabit
(soon to come) Intel 6300 A/B/G/N card

4GB CF running embedded pFsense

400w 2U 80+ PSU

Oh, and best yet, its extremely quiet...

 

[keenan]

6 NICs and dual Xeons? what are you doing.

 

[staticlag]

My Home network is:

Dell 2950 (dual xeon 2.0 gHz, 4 GB RAM) - Debian
Dell 1950 (quad xeon 3 gHz, 18GB RAM) - WinServer08R2
Whitebox Storage Server Opterons 2.4 gHz, 4 GB RAM - 11TB WinStorageServer08
PS3
2 PCs, 3 laptops

I like to have a little breathing room

benchmarked it last night, and using 2 of the 4 cores it passes 390 Mbps from WAN to LAN with the SPI firewall and basic rules. Processor usage is at 50%, which means its the PCI-X NICs that are slowing it down. If I get some time I'll tweak it for speed and re-benchmark this weekend, its geared for low power usage and low noise as is.

 

[adi]

Well I went ahead and pulled the trigger on new home firewall box.

SUPERMICRO SYS-5015A-PHF with 4gb ram. Its the 1u Supermicro Atom box with Intel nics.

Replacing a Core2Duo E6600 with 8gb ram running untangle. Planning on putting pfsense on it (pfsense doesn't like the sata controller on my current machine), untangle was the only option that worked, although it doesn't see my intel gb nics.