You don’t “need” it. My ubuntu router runs on a old q9650, and it hosts 4 lxc containers all running openvpn instances with aes-256-cbc encryption. CPU usage has never been an issue.
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Depends. However, pfSense is going to require it in 2.5 and later:
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=129842.15
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pfSense is far from your only option. I’d be surprised if there weren’t more people who’d just installed Ubuntu server on a random 2 nic machine and enabled forwarding than there are users of pfSense
The main advantage to using a vanilla server distribution over a gui firewall distribution is everything you already know about securing servers with iptables is directly applicable to your router setup. It’s really just another server.
I’ve been running a j1900d2y asrockrack mini-ITX with a picopsu for a couple years now.
I setup CentOS using iptables for routing / firewall duties.
That looks really cool! How’s the power efficiency on that? I’m thinking about getting the i3 version and a separate wireless access point.
Maybe something like this?
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=0XM-0013-00050&cm_re=wireless_access_point--0XM-0013-00050--Product
I use a pc engines apu2c4 running OpenBSD myself as my router on a 500Mbit fiber line. They’re really small (tiny) form factor 4 core AMD jaguar embedded PCs, so they can run pfsense, linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc, too.
The only caveat is, no graphical output, so you have to use a serial cable to do the installation and initial setup, but after that you can just ssh to them, of course.
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Just plugged it into my cheap ass power meter and seems to be drawing 10-14W or so. It isn’t under high load.
It is also warm to the touch.
Oh nice that’s pretty good!
And over the last 4 hours, a min/max of 1.2 - 21.3W.
So I guess it is pretty efficient!
That sounds about as good as it gets!
i have california internet 350 down 10 up 
my upload is so pathetic
Putting this one back to sleep. Please start a new thread if you’d like to continue the discussion. You can always link the new topic to this one.