So I have Xfinity because that is the only choice for internet where I live. Other than super fast DSL.
So I cut the TV cord over 2 years ago but the more we streamed and the older the kids got I needed more upload speed. Without paying $300 a month and the massive install bill to get fiber run to my house. I ended up going with there gigabit service to get about 900 down and 35-40 up. Earlier this year they increased the download speed but forgot about the upload speed as usual. So the Gigabit is now 1.2 Gig. To actually get the speed they now provisioned my modem at I needed to get the ARRIS Surfboard S33 that has a 2.5Gig port on it. But my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter 4 only had 1Gig ports so I would never get the full speed even thought the rest of my house is 10Gig. So I started looking at pfsence but no one had a write up about a 10Gig pfsence build. So I did as much research as I could to make sure I got compatible NIC’s. I finally decided to pull the cord and get everything I needed. This build I know is probably way over powered but I will never have to worry about what I want to do with it.
BUILD
pfsence 2.5.0-RELEASE
Rosewill 4U Server Chassis (RSV-L4000) with Rails
GIGABYTE B450 AORUS ELITE V2 ATX
AMD AMD RYZEN 5 3600
G.SKILL 32GB 2X16 D4 3200 RIPJAWS
CRUCIAL 250GB P5 NVME M.2
EVGA 650GT 80+G FM PSU
ZOTAC GeForce GT 710 1GB DDR3 PCIE x 1
Ebay Intel X550-T2 10Gb Dual Port 10GBase-T
Ebay Chelsio T520-CR Dual Port 10Gb SFP+
CAT8 Ethernet Cable Cord Patch Cable
10Gtek SFP+ Twinax Cable, 10GB DAC
So I put it all together and put it in my server rack. I did the initial bios setup like I normally would have turned on xmp, set the time, and turned on SVM. I then saved and installed pfsence with a flash drive to the computer. It booted up no issues I then went through the auto recognize for which port each cable was plugged into. The X550-T2 is connected to my modem cause its just a normal ethernet cable NIC on the modem. The T520-CR is connected to my Unifi 10G US-16-XG. I got that initial setup done around 1am after starting the install of it in the rack at midnight. Didn’t want to listen to the kids complain there was no tv. I then spent 30 mins trying to figure out why I couldn’t get to the internet. I could pull up the web GUI for it but there was no outside connection. Then I realized I never restarted my modem or the the pfsence box. Once I restarted the modem and did a normal restart of the pfsence router everything came up with no issues. I set the Lan connection manually to 10G and MTU to 9000. The WAN side I had to leave at Default autoselect for it to connect at the 2.5G of the modem because there is no drop down for it and I set the MTU to 4500. After that configurations saved I did a speed test and got 1.35Gig down and 41 MB up. I though sweet everything is working so I can set up the last of the stuff I need to. I then proceeded to make the port forwarding for my Plex server and set up my Vlan for my guest network. At 2AM I thought sweet I have all the internet speed and went to bed. This morning I woke up to take 2 of my kids to school while my high schooler has remote learning and there was no internet. some time between 2:30am and 7am the thing crapped out. So I thought ok maybe it just needs a restart no big deal. But I had to turn off the power supply to shut it down which was a bad sign. But I did that gave it a minute turned it back on it booted up no issues but before I could even make it to my computer to check for internet or the router it had crashed again. The wifey emailed the oldest’s school saying we were having internet problems while i ran the other 2 to school. I reconnected the old router so I could get work down and so he could get to online class. I did some searching around and found some issues with crashing with this cpu and BIOS versions so I downloaded the most recent bios for this board figuring maybe something happened to it and just needs to be written again. The newest version was F61 the version on the board was F60 I noticed that there was no version F60 in the download for this board so I’m not sure where this bios was from. So I installed the latest bios and left all the presets alone no XMP and no SVM. I know that should have been one of the first things I did last night when I started it up. But tired brain forgets things. After installed the bios it started up no crashing I left it running for about an hour without being hooked up to the network. At lunch i did the change over. Restarted the modem restarted the pfsence box everything came up and has been working correctly ever since. Were at 4 hours of uptime so far.
I really hope ASRock Rack come out with there m.2 VGA adapter so I don’t have to switch the ZOTAC GeForce GT 710 1GB DDR3 PCIE x 1 between this and my TrueNAS machine for setting up stuff. I would get 2 of them right away.
After this i will always double check the BIOS versions to make sure i am on the latest.