A quick pfSense+Beelink question/recommendation/potential FAQ

Hi,

A couple of quick questions while I’m grepping for info; I’ve not found authoritative answers yet:

  1. I’ve finally decided to climb aboard the pfSense train, and I intend to do it on a Beelink EQR6 (8-core Ryzen processor). Have you tried using one of these for a network appliance? It has two 1G NICs. I presume that the BIOS (AMI from what I’ve seen) will allow pass-through of the NICs to ProxMox, or maybe ProxMox handles that; I don’t know. Does it? Will it all just work? I expect so, but can’t be sure as I’ve not seen anyone use this specific mini-pc for a router-firewall. An AliExpress special is an alternative: those seem to be the favorite. An 8-core Ryzen is probably overkill too, from what I’ve seen - Alder Lake Celeron or below seems perfectly OK for a firewall. I mean, I’m not the NSA here…

  2. As a proof-of-concept I’ve decided to install ProxMox and pfSense and anything else necessary on a Z590/i7-11700K system first. For this I need an additional NIC (maybe two; why aren’t more people putting DMZs on separate NICs? Does ProxMox/pfSense not handle that? I should understand VLANs better…). My network “infrastructure” is a lowly 1Gbps so I don’t need anything esoteric (but if it all works then who knows: 10Gps, then SFP+, then…?!). Intel seems to be the brand that’s recommended, but all I can find (AMZN, Newegg) is the likes of TP-Link and Startech e.g. (unless the price gets out of hand). I’m pretty sure low-end NICs are commodity items these days and will just work. Do you have any dis/recommendations for the described application? I’ll probably go cheap-and-cheerful TP-Link unless there’s a hard disrecommend.

If you have any other observations/recommendations/lore/thoughts on the subject of DIY router-firewall in a mini-pc, specifically the EQR6, then please pass them along! (I’ve already watched tons of videos from the likes of ServeTheHome, Hardware Haven, Jim’s Garage and several others I can’t recall the names of).

Cheers,
“Lionel Mandrake”