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Thanks for this. I've been keeping an eye out for home firewall hardware that won't break the bank, spike my power bill, and hopefully still keep up with most o

Thanks for this. I've been keeping an eye out for home firewall hardware that won't break the bank, spike my power bill, and hopefully still keep up with most of my theoretically-1-Gbps home connection.

squarefoot 5y ago
Check also the PCEngines APU boards at https://pcengines.ch https://pcengines.ch Also interesting are the NanoPi R2S and R4S at https://www.friendlyarm.com https://www.friendlyarm.com Especially those by PCEngines are designed for that job; I've used their Wrap boards in the past as firewalls with PfSense and they were rock solid. No affiliation with any of them, just a satisfied customer.
- mahalol 5y ago
  Can confirm, I have been using pfSense on one apu board, and debian on another older 2c13 board. they are such nifty devices with a very simple case. Big fan.
Scramblejams 5y ago
Not sure if you're looking to use pfSense, but if you are, and you want to get gigabit for a single TCP connection, choose carefully among the SBC options. See this for more detail: https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/apu2-1-gigabit-throughput-pfsense/ https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/apu2-1-gigabit-through... For me, I've discovered the excellent Supermicro X10SLM+-F motherboard. I've bought them off eBay for as little as $145 with 32 gigs of ECC RAM and a 4-core Xeon E3-1220v3 included. Every one I've grabbed runs flawlessly. That board uses around 25w at idle with the BMC running, and can host more than just a pfSense VM. You still have to supply a case and a high quality PSU (don't skimp here!), but those don't have to break the bank. (If you want to run your router in a VM and pass the LAN controllers through to it, I can recommend the X10SLM+-LN4F, which adds two more gigabit ports. Pricing should be similar.) If I had to do this on a tighter budget, I have tried OpenWRT on an Rpi4 and it was definitely workable. Didn't have a few features I was looking for, and I was already running a Supermicro anyway for other workloads, so I went back to using a pfSense VM, but YMMV.
sneak 5y ago
I use a pcengines apu2. It's x64 and runs ubuntu. 3 onboard gbe ports. Passively cooled/silent, boots from SD.

squarefoot 5y ago

Check also the PCEngines APU boards at https://pcengines.ch https://pcengines.ch Also interesting are the NanoPi R2S and R4S at https://www.friendlyarm.com https://www.friendlyarm.com Especially those by PCEngines are designed for that job; I've used their Wrap boards in the past as firewalls with PfSense and they were rock solid. No affiliation with any of them, just a satisfied customer.

mahalol 5y ago
Can confirm, I have been using pfSense on one apu board, and debian on another older 2c13 board. they are such nifty devices with a very simple case. Big fan.

Scramblejams 5y ago

Not sure if you're looking to use pfSense, but if you are, and you want to get gigabit for a single TCP connection, choose carefully among the SBC options. See this for more detail: https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/apu2-1-gigabit-throughput-pfsense/ https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/apu2-1-gigabit-through... For me, I've discovered the excellent Supermicro X10SLM+-F motherboard. I've bought them off eBay for as little as $145 with 32 gigs of ECC RAM and a 4-core Xeon E3-1220v3 included. Every one I've grabbed runs flawlessly. That board uses around 25w at idle with the BMC running, and can host more than just a pfSense VM. You still have to supply a case and a high quality PSU (don't skimp here!), but those don't have to break the bank. (If you want to run your router in a VM and pass the LAN controllers through to it, I can recommend the X10SLM+-LN4F, which adds two more gigabit ports. Pricing should be similar.) If I had to do this on a tighter budget, I have tried OpenWRT on an Rpi4 and it was definitely workable. Didn't have a few features I was looking for, and I was already running a Supermicro anyway for other workloads, so I went back to using a pfSense VM, but YMMV.

sneak 5y ago

I use a pcengines apu2. It's x64 and runs ubuntu. 3 onboard gbe ports. Passively cooled/silent, boots from SD.