I have old parts that I could make a full build with (Ivy Bridge CPU, 8 gigs RAM) that I might turn into a NAS later down the road. But I would like to hear the communities ideas on some networking ideas. I’ve got the switch so I can use a wired connection at LAN parties that I do most weekends. Caching on pfSense will be nice because my internet is rather slow.
Is all that done through pfSense? One issue I have right now is that when we do LAN parties sometimes not everybody has the updated version of the game we want to play, so we manually copy the files to each machine, it's a pain in the ass and doesn't work all the time.
Don't expect caching to have much of an effect, your browser already has a cache so unless there are a lot of clients you're really just adding a delay to the system.
I was going to say check that the cisco switch has a webUI but if you're already familiar with cisco stuff then don't worry about that, otherwise looks like a good plan.
I think there are better ways to cache steam than squid, the problem is that steam uses so many CDNs that it won't work properly without a lot of DNS redirecting. I'm fairly sure there is software dedicated to steam caching.
Here's what I would do, because I'm one of those weird IT People who love to overdo shit.
10Gbps x 2 1Gbps x24 dumb (managed) switch $250 2 Server barebone (Dual 2011) $200 4 E5-2670 137.95 per pair or $280 2 64 Kits of RAM $200 SAS Chassis $400 24 SAS HDD 10K RPM $400
You'll need a SAS card for drives (I use IT mode cards for most distros for JBOD pools or just normal OS file systems)
LSI 9211-8i for eSAS on the mobo to the SAS Chassis $90 Two 8088 to 8087 cables to go from the raid card to the eSAS connector on the JBOD array $26
Now you have a choice on NIC for your Router box, You can go with 10Gbps SFP+ if you have fiber or Ethernet coming in. Or if you want to go with a quad 1Gbps nic for multiple IO That can work as well.