I finally made the switch from Smoothwall to pfSense. I have been running a Smoothwall in one form or another since probably 2004, so I was pretty comfortable with it.
Hit a few snags when setting up the pfSense system yesterday, but it seems to be running smoothly now. On my WAN gateway I had constant drops and 'packet loss.' I upped the packet loss threshold and it seems stable now. I have crappy DSL service and a crappy DSL modem, so I am assuming that was the cause. Static IP assignment was bugging me a little while ago, when I figured out that the auto assigned IP as still active for that device. Unplugged it and killed the lease and it assigned the static IP as soon as I plugged it back in.
System components are:
Zotac IONITX-F-E motherboard with Intel Atom 330 CPU (dual core HT capable)
2GB DDR2 memory (don't remember speed, probably 667 or 533)
32GB Sandisk ReadyCache SSD (almost 30k hours on it)
Onboard NIC for WAN
Broadcom NetExtreme 5720 dual GbE NIC for LAN and probably DMZ
300W Seasonic PSU
Ark 2U case
I need to figure out DNS and how to set up a DMZ (and how it really works). Also need to look into packages and see of anything will be of use to me. pfBlocker seems like it might be cool.
I need router help. I am not rich, and don't have the parts laying around to build a pfsense router. I wouldn't mind building one from scratch, but it seems very difficult to do for under $200 (my max budget). I'm not that great with router hardware or software, so I kinda need something that will work fairly easily. I'm willing to learn but may have questions. I believe I was aircracked, so I will not open my network to wifi except with a separate wifi router for short amounts of time. What I need are some hardware recommendations. I use pcpartpicker to keep lists of parts for stuff (not for selection of hardware) and the lists are easy to post. I need 1 wan, and 4 lan, no wifi. What I'm looking for then would be under $200 for: 1. An already build router with pfsense already on it. 2. A router that will work if I installed pfsense on it. 3. A cheap PC build that will work with pfsense on it.
You can buy a used pc and put pfsense on it, that's your best option at that budget. You want to make sure it either had two network interfaces or a free pci-e slot so you can add one in. Leave room in your budget for a cheap network switch to connect to it. You want network cards for each network, which in your case is lan and wan, so you connect the switch to the lan interface and then your other devices to the switch.
Thanks for your help. I've talked to a guy with a computer shop that is tearing down some computers, so I have him on look out. Something like this for a switch?
