Best NIC for Router

[T_Minus]

Thanks to a trade with another member here I'll soon be in possession of a Rangley 4C/4T ITX setup I will be using for my new pfsense router. It has built in 4 ports which is great for dual-wan, home lan, and business lan... however, I need to run fiber from it to my office in another building 100' away. No fiber ports.

I don't really have a need to route 10G between home and business networks, however if it's not much more electricity/power I will go that route just so I can have 10G on my work station-->work stuff.

I'm looking for a 2x Port 1G(SFP) or 10G(SFP+) NIC. I'm assuming Intel will be the best choice, and looking at their 'latest gen' 10G reviews from @Patrick on the STH home site the 40GbE Intel is rather tempting especially with some fiber DACs I have for QSFP.

With that said.

If I can find a 2x Port 1Gig SFP NIC that only uses 5w I'd prefer that over a 11W 10G NIC.

I've never looked for 1Gig SFP NIcs. No clue of models, where to start, etc.

I know 5-6w more isn't much, but when total idle power is around the power of 1 NIC it is a rather insane % of power-draw for a router


So, what's the best (in terms of pfsense and power usage) SFP 1G NIC?

 

[Evan]

I would have thought another intel i350 card but fiber... but I don't know how common such a card is.

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/w...briefs/ethernet-i350-server-adapter-brief.pdf

 

[Aluminum]

China (via fleabay) will sell you a dual or quad SFP i350, often with both brackets. The chip will be i350 (for drivers etc) and some of the common reliability problems with RJ45 ports won't be an issue with using your own SFPs, given prices and availability contrary to normal advice I'd actually recommend going the china clone route.

The pricing is pretty damned good in comparison to almost non-existent sources of "normal" cards (server pull supply is almost 0 unlike the rj45 cards) buy a spare or three if you're really paranoid about failures.

 

[bds1904]

Chelsio T520-SO-CR

Chelsio T520-SO-CR Dual-Port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter SFP+

No issues at all with pfSense and it'll do 10Gb symmetrical all day.

 

[RTM]

An alternative approach, could be to use SFP media converters, like this one from tp-link: link
Yet another alternative could be to use a cheap Mikrotik/UBNT/etc router that has a SFP port (be sure to check block diagrams, ideally the SFP port should "come" from the switch, not the routers CPU - it may still work), the idea is to use it not as a L3 device, but just as a bridge (which is what a media converter is).

Also you should consider whether or not you want the SFP ports to be part of your router or just be another port on your switch (possibly with a media converter or equivalent).

If you need the SFP port to be part of your business network (and you already use one RJ45 port on the mobo for that), you will probably need to setup a bridge between the two ports, however the downside to that is that packets will need to be sent to the CPU for bridging, which will essentially waste precious CPU cycles that could be used for routing packets.

Generally speaking, and what I am getting at, is you want to use your firewall to route packets to the internet, not between local networks. Between local networks you can use a higher performing router such as a L3 switch.
Of course I have to say that there are (many) exceptions to this.

 

[sth]

second the chelsio t520-so-cr - had one in my c2758 box for nearly 3 years now without a single hiccup. They do run warm mind so make sure theres some airflow over it.

 

[T_Minus]

I have a switch I can introduce, but it seems silly to have a switch for the sole purpose of a media converter.
I think I'll end up using one of the Intel cards I have, and keep hardware to a minimum.

Thanks for the info and thoughts guys!