A dell optiflex 960 sff good for home router?

[RTM]

As you mentioned you were also making a server for virtualization, have you considered virtualizing your router/firewall?
While it does have its limitations, it sounds (to me) like it would be a better solution than to use some very old hardware (like a Core 2).

 

[vl1969]

Yes I had concidered it, but I do not feel I can manage that kind of setup. It might work in a redundant setup or only as a firewall use, but not as a router for me

 

[bds1904]

If you want to run pfsense look for an HP t5745. Grab a 2 port nic (pci-e or pci-x depending on what type of expansion model you get), get a 4gb flash drive and go to town.

It'll route 550mbit all day long and its good for OpenVPN up to 60Mbit or so.

Another option, although more expensive, would be to buy an appliance directly from pfsense. Those start at $300 but they are low power, come with 4 support incidents and just work.

I would stay away from the edgerouter-x. If edgeos fits your needs the edgerouter lite is the only way to go. I have used them before but for my needs I was not overly impressed. The edgerouter lite is fast, no question, when you aren't doing anything that disables hardware acceleration. Ipsec is fast because of hardware acceleration but OpenVPN is brutally slow.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying the edgerouter is a bad device, I'm just saying you need to evaluate your current and future needs before you go that route.

 

[vl1969]

If you want to run pfsense look for an HP t5745. Grab a 2 port nic (pci-e or pci-x depending on what type of expansion model you get), get a 4gb flash drive and go to town.

It'll route 550mbit all day long and its good for OpenVPN up to 60Mbit or so.

Another option, although more expensive, would be to buy an appliance directly from pfsense. Those start at $300 but they are low power, come with 4 support incidents and just work.

I would stay away from the edgerouter-x. If edgeos fits your needs the edgerouter lite is the only way to go. I have used them before but for my needs I was not overly impressed. The edgerouter lite is fast, no question, when you aren't doing anything that disables hardware acceleration. Ipsec is fast because of hardware acceleration but OpenVPN is brutally slow.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying the edgerouter is a bad device, I'm just saying you need to evaluate your current and future needs before you go that route.

I was considering the HP thin client earlier. but it hard to find one in capable of expansion config on ebay.
I do not want to go over $100 too much. I will consider going close to $200 at most but only if the hardware looks decent enough (to me). that is why I was looking into SFF setup as it is small, usually power efficient but have a real PC capability

 

[canta]

Well if you look my op, I was asking about dell sff for just that. Maybe dell 930 is not right setup for that, but it is low cosr option. I am also looking at lenovo think center 91m looks more customizable than dell .

stick with standard mini-itx or micro-atx. you can replace motherboard easily when you need to replace newer motherboard.


all sff is mostly not using generic motherboard layout.

I do not know 91m, if the motherboard is standard micro-atx or not. do your research...




as I said newer atom/baytrail D/braswell low power cpu is not underdog performance as used to be, those have much processing power and very low power compared with other risc/mips "higher" performance.

 

[canta]

As you mentioned you were also making a server for virtualization, have you considered virtualizing your router/firewall?
While it does have its limitations, it sounds (to me) like it would be a better solution than to use some very old hardware (like a Core 2).

I totaly agree with your suggestion,
Already virtualized my router with celeron 847 (running esxi 5.X) and move to baytrail D J1800 (running proxmox 4.o, just upgraded from 3.5).
other task in the same machine is running two extra debian VMs. one is openvpn client and other is housekeeping tasks.

 

[bds1904]

I was considering the HP thin client earlier. but it hard to find one in capable of expansion config on ebay.
I do not want to go over $100 too much. I will consider going close to $200 at most but only if the hardware looks decent enough (to me). that is why I was looking into SFF setup as it is small, usually power efficient but have a real PC capability

Pfsense 2.2.4 HP-t5740 Intel Atom Firewall 2GR/60G HDD 3gig NICs, Wireless

$130 entire pfsense setup pre-built.

 

[canta]

Pfsense 2.2.4 HP-t5740 Intel Atom Firewall 2GR/60G HDD 3gig NICs, Wireless

$130 entire pfsense setup pre-built.

atom N2XX is pretty week.. for soho router. new atom is different beast

 

[bds1904]

atom N2XX is pretty week.. for soho router. new atom is different beast

Like I said before it'll route 550mbit all day and do 60mbit on aes256 OpenVPN. I have used that exact setup for site-to-site vpn's for a personal project.

The edgerouter lite will route 1gbps just fine and do ipsec extremely well because of the hardware acceleration, but OpenVPN is painfully slow at 15mbit. Like I said before, there isn't anything wrong with an edgerouter lite, they are great, as long as you don't need anything that isn't handled by the hardware acceleration.

That little pfsense box will also handle running suricata on a 75/7 connection, just an FYI.

I'm just presenting both options, that is all. I'm not pretending that the thin client will route 1gb or do 100mbit ipsec, because it won't. I'm also not saying that it's better than the newer atom's with more advanced CPU instructions because it's not. I'm just presenting that there is a pfsense option that'll handle a decent amount of traffic (and vpn traffic) in the sub $150 price range that won't use a massive amount of power.

 

[vl1969]

I am looking at lenovo think center with INTEL i5 2400 cpu and 4gb ram. I might be able to get it for aroind 60$ shipped. Add 20$ for a intel dual nic and I get a pretty good setup for under 100. Should not pull more than 60w.

 

[canta]

speaking on atomN2XX. you need to be think further not talking on 999 up/down. Not just to mention using openvpn or ipsec only.

running squid, proxy, antivirus, and others services are eating cpu processing much.

in my real life, I added more services/daemons running on router that eat pretty much cpu processing power and memory. I would like to make sure that more services can be added in the future without affecting performance in overall

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if you pick thinkcenter i5 2400 without power consumption in your head. you can go ahead to do that.
make sure your thinkcenter motherboard is regular matx that can be replaced easily in the future.