On networking forums I see multiple questions inquiring about hardware for these freebsd based router distros. While the current consensus seems to be to spend the ~$200 for an Alder lake (N100) based device. I'd like to offer an alternative:
A slightly older C3000 (Denverton) based network appliance. These are a) a lot cheaper (under $50 - $100) b) have similar if not better VPN performance due to intel QAT c) similar if not much less power consumption.
Couple of examples:
A slightly older C3000 (Denverton) based network appliance. These are a) a lot cheaper (under $50 - $100) b) have similar if not better VPN performance due to intel QAT c) similar if not much less power consumption.
Couple of examples:
- Dell velocloud edge devices:
- Hardware specs for the cheapest:
- 2 core: Intel Atom® C3338 Processor
- 4 GB of RAM
- Two 1 GbE SFP and Six 1 GbE networking ports
- One dedicated MiniUSB 2.0 console port for out-of-band management
- Two USB 3.0 Type A ports on each side of the platform
- One M.2 SATA SSD with 120 GB or 240 GB capacity
- Cheap:
- 610: Dell VMware Edge 610 / E42W Network Router Switch - White - No Power Cord | eBay : $25 shipped
- 620: VMWARE DELL EDGE 620 VELOCLOUD SD-WAN E42W 0731RT WIFI 5 ACCELERATOR TESTED | eBay: $95 shipped
- 4 core: Intel Atom® C3538 Processor
- 8gb of RAM
- 2 10gb SFP+
- Installation:
- Hardware specs for the cheapest:
- Silver Peak FWA-ASP1012 EC-XS
- Hardware spec:
- 120GB M.2 B+M SATA SSD* (2280), 16GB ECC RAM, Quad Core Intel Atom C35582.20 GHz CPU with QAT, AES-NI Crypto Capability, (2) USB3 ports, (1) Console port (6) Intel Ethernet Ports- lan0, wan0, lan1, wan1 ports use the ix Intel 10Gb Ethernet driver. OPNsense reports these as Intel(R) X553 (1GbE) mgmt0 and mgmt1 ports use igb Intel(R) PRO/1000 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet adapter driver, reported as Intel(R) I210 (Copper)
- Cheap:
- Installation and further details
- Hardware spec: