Need to know if I got this right. Passthrough NIC for WAN

[PigLover]

Correct that RouterOS has a license fee. But I currently use it on MokroTik hardware and it came bundled with the box. A MikroTik 450G can be had for $50 with the license included so it's pretty nominal cost for the license

 

[weust]

I hadn't looked up costs, but for home use free is even better
Not that I mind paying for software, just if there is a free alternative I'd like to find something suitable to my taste before needing to pay for my taste.

 

[dataoscar]

I read about the new pfsense, but there isn't a beta available yet?

The latest snapshots(beta) of pfsense are available and are running on 2.2 which uses FreeBSD 10

 

[weust]

Yeah, I noticed that after I typed it and went looking on the site/forum.
I got confused with the stable version. The download page mentioned that virtualization downloads will be added soon. Which in free/open source software communities usually means somewhere between now and the end of never

 

[Mike]

The virtual image is not necessary. Just install it with additional drivers manually.

 

[weust]

I know that now, but before knowing it I checked the site too and saw that message.

 

[spazoid]

Just a heads-up: There is a CPU usage issue with version 2.x of pfsense running on ESXi. I've spent the better part of the last few days looking for a fix, but without any luck yet.

There are MANY others with the same issue. Basically, pfSense shows very low CPU usage (0-4%) during downloads at 30-40 mbps, but vSphere reports the VM as using upwards of 2000 MHz. Idle is around 500 MHz, streaming tv at a constant 10 mbps bumps this up to around 1000 MHz.

This issue does not appear to affect pfSense 1.x. It does not appear to be related to the vHardware version, pNIC vs. vNIC, vSwitches, cpu architecture, VM tools or ESXi version.

Worst part is, the pfSense developers seems to not care. I haven't checked if the issue also exists on Hyper-V.

 

[weust]

Well, that sucks...

 

[Mike]

Does it happen with Freebsd?

 

[weust]

Was wondering that too. Plus, I can't find anything related to ESX and the CPU problem on the forums. Or bug tracker.
Only thing I saw was for Hyper-V. One single mentioning though.

Got any links to share on this?

 

[spazoid]

People have run FreeBSD machines on the same ESXi host at the same time as pfSense VM's that suffers from this. The pfSense VM shows CPU usages in the 500+ MHz range while the FreeBSD VM's show around 10-50 MHz.

Lots of forums threads throughout the web related to the issue: Google