Yeah didn’t really think about that.
So I have one i got for like $30 from a local bin store a netgear GS316EPP witch is kind of inspiring this idea of using pfsense
I may try this first since I the on board and the one port nic I have laying around should work
That will probably work fine 
I experienced weird issues with pfSense and Realtek NICs (~2008 vintage) on a very old AMD jaguar board. I’ve since upgraded to an Intel i350 which is fairly cheap and very robust. It manages to saturate my 1 gbit connection without any issues.
I use opnsense on a 2200g with zenarmour and see about 50% usage.
I used to use pfsense but jumped ship during the wireguard fiasco.
I typically use Intel nics and have had issues with 2 different realtek based nics over the years.
Having heaps of control has been great and glad I moved from the ISP modem/router garbage
Yeah I need to look into opnsense. Dont know a ton about either one just know that I want to move on from my current soho router to something better.
I recently repurpose my old i5 9600k gaming system to run proxmox and pfsense and I was surprised by the relatively low power consumption (around 50W compared to 30W that my old celeron SoC system used, and that’s with 6 hard drives in the system).
For normal use (internet, VPN, suricata) the CPU sits at 800mhz and about 20% usage and only speeds up if I’m doing something heavy like routing between VLANs at 10gbps.
I recently updated pfsense to the new version of pfsense+ (the community edition will get updated soon) and that dropped my CPU usage by a third.
Definitely jump in and have a play you will be amazed at what you can do and how much more reliable your home network can be
Not a good idea for home use IMO. Unless you live off grid or near a hydro power plant…
A Ryzen 1600 system idles around 50W. Operating 24/7, it’s around 438kWh a year. By the average US electricity price, the annual operating cost is over $70. I’m pretty sure over 90% of that electricity and dollars are wasted…instead of used.
To put things into perspective:
Ryzen 1600 currently sells around $50 on ebay. You’re throwing away a Ryzen 1600 every year you operate the system 24/7.
A little but very capable router such Edgerouter X, idles at 2.7W, max at 3.1W.
I did not know about that i may look into buying one of those it would be cheaper than getting a good nic thanks
Just so you know the Edgerouter X is hamstrung by the 1Gbps half duplex pipe to the CPU, which may be a deal breaker for you.
Interesting…you brought this up.
I was the original author/discoverer who documented this issue about six years ago. So basically every article/post after that I’ve seen was a repeat of my finding. lol
It’s not exactly half duplex. But aggregated bandwidth is capped at 1Gbps either purposely by Ubiquiti or simply a lack of competence by Ubiquiti. I believe OpenWRT won’t have this issue. If people going to put money on ERX in 2023, most likely should plan to run OpenWRT in the long run btw.
Anyway, this thread is not about ERX or bashing Ubiquiti…
Wasn’t my intention, it’s just a friendly heads up for him to manage his expectations.
While I agree with the numbers $70 a year is not a lot for the fun, utility and entertainment of having a Ryzen 1600 servre running a router, NAS and homelab.
Edit:
pfSense and OPNSense are also extremely capable router operating systems that make most other software look like the networking equivalent of Lego DUPLO.
If you some day want to go 10Gbit you just put a new network card in the box, that’s gotta count for something.
What OPNSense (also pfSense) nice about is the GUI which is important to some users but not all users.
For home use, most power users don’t need router for 10Gbps to internet but a 10Gps switch for the LAN.
I don’t think it is either, but I am a bit worried about having my NAS and router in the same device. No specific reason it just seems like a bad idea to have my data on the same device as my firewall. I maybe and probably am wrong, but it feels off. I still want to, but I know I am going to have to do quite a bit to get it segmented properly.
I really do want to play with pfSense and OPNSense. That is the primary reason for wanting to switch from my current router. It does all that I need for the most part.
The other router I was looking at is the TP-link omada, but I really just want to learn pfSense and OPNSense so like the Edgerouter X it kind of defeats the propose for me.
The multi-purpose server/router was just an example. The point was that an off-the-shelf router will only ever be a router and while learning the ins and outs of Ubiquiti or Cisco or whatever vendors software can certainly be satisfying, the DIY router is just, in my opinion, more fun
I have to respectably disagree about the fun part. 'cos what I imagine (be there done that) won’t turn out to be fun. Also fun is quite personal, subjective and seasonal. Put in other words adults find toys in many different ways. E.g. making a little router work at home in whatever way you want with minimal wattage is fun too. Perhaps power efficiency is another level more and more people start to think about.
Back to OPNsense/pfSense. What’s nice about them is the GUI. I meant they don’t come with a CLI (which is big minus IMO btw). All supported features are configurable through the GUI. So many many knobs people can easily turn and try. That’s the only and major advantage I see in OPNsense/pfSense.
I would assert nothing under the sun in networking can’t be dealt with in Linux the kernel. Whether it’s called EdgeOS, OpenWRT, VyOS or whatever doesn’t matter. What these vendors added is a layer of sugarcoat (i.e. CLI and/or GUI) of configuring the router.
Talking about the sugarcoat. I’m apparently inclined to Vyatta derived CLI more than a GUI such as OPNsense or pfSense. And do I want to spend time learning the inner workings of FreeBSD kernel? Not at all. I’m very happy with Linux the kernel which luckily is much more dominant in lots of applications including routers.
Just some thought. Not intended to debate what’s good what’s not.
The biggest risk is that a misconfiguration could have your internet connected directly to the host system, but so long as you are aware of that and configure the network appropriately on the host system you’ll be alright. Otherwise it is nice having dedicated hardware for the router so that if your server goes down for whatever reason you don’t lose your internet connection / networking. But if you’re not turning it off all the time it’s not so bad to live with and minimising the number of computers you have running might make it worthwhile.
Today at Goodwill in my little town I found an Edgerouter X for 15$ so I guess maybe the universe wants me to try it. so for now since it was a steal I am going to at least play with it. I think may use it for the next year or so then buy some kind of AliExpress firewall appliance and switch to PfSense/OPNsense. I still may try to use Ryzen 1600 as a router just to tinker with. I think I could learn quite a bit from virtualizing Pfsense, but I could be wrong.
Can’t say no to $15. Good buy.
$15 is a real steal! The seller apparently didn’t know the value of this gadget. Lucky you.
