I started off my work day today with my entire network going down. Checked my pFSense physical console and it was still on/not throwing any errors but the web GUI was no longer responding. The display out was still fine but once at the keys, it was clear the output was frozen. Quick reboot. Oh no? It’s not rebooting at all.
I took the thing apart. Perhaps it was a power switch issue? I tried reseating the switch cable then manually booting via shorting the jumpers. No dice. Perhaps power brick issue? It wasn’t booting once plugging in a spare 20 pin ATX cable as well. Reseated memory, changed RTC battery. Nothing worked.
I guess it finally gave up the ghost after 8 years of service.
My current pFSense is built around a Jetway NF9N-N2930 mITX board with a quad 82574L daughter board. It was sufficient for my needs as I haven’t moved back to >1 GbE fiber yet. My intention was to do so soon, as up to 5 GbE service is available now, but I didn’t get around to it.
I’ve been trying to brainstorm some ideas for a “compact” router for up to multi-gig/10 GbE seeing as ISP speeds here will hit that within the lifetime of a new router. Preferably it will use standardized parts if possible, but I’m not against custom FF.
Closing thought: I’ve been running pFSense since the project’s inception, in 2006; 16 years. Prior to that I ran the project it was forked from, m0n0wall. I appreciate that as an appliance distribution changes to pFSense have been slow, but it certainly feels like that in the last couple years at least, development has stalled. Any other suggestions for an OSS router/firewall distro that is more modern than pFSense (needs to be stable)?
I took the thing apart. Perhaps it was a power switch issue? I tried reseating the switch cable then manually booting via shorting the jumpers. No dice. Perhaps power brick issue? It wasn’t booting once plugging in a spare 20 pin ATX cable as well. Reseated memory, changed RTC battery. Nothing worked.
I guess it finally gave up the ghost after 8 years of service.
My current pFSense is built around a Jetway NF9N-N2930 mITX board with a quad 82574L daughter board. It was sufficient for my needs as I haven’t moved back to >1 GbE fiber yet. My intention was to do so soon, as up to 5 GbE service is available now, but I didn’t get around to it.
I’ve been trying to brainstorm some ideas for a “compact” router for up to multi-gig/10 GbE seeing as ISP speeds here will hit that within the lifetime of a new router. Preferably it will use standardized parts if possible, but I’m not against custom FF.
- I like the HP T740, but I need at a minimum 4 multi-gig NICs, and worried even a X710-T4L will bake inside due to the T740 only having a single system fan.
- Another consideration is a boutique mITX case such as the Velka 3/5, which will allow standard parts to be used. More than adequate cooling here.
- “Custom” mini PC FF, e.g. Topton JSL quad i225V box. Major cons are NICs can’t be upgraded, and it will be stuck with 2.5 GbE.
- Small(-ish). 5L and below would be nice.
- Bare metal. I don’t virtualize for core networking.
- 4 NICs minimum: WAN, LAN, GUEST, IoT, DMZ.
- Multi-Gig up to 10 GbE would be ideal. Although I can probably live with 2.5 GbE WAN until the pricing side becomes more reasonable.
- Decent OpenVPN (75-100 Mbps)/WireGuard (300-500 Mbps) performance.
- IDS/IPS. I have been running Snort for many years but should probably move to Suricata.
- DNSBL. Via PfBlockerNG.
- Squid.
- Other stuff should probably be able to run on any hardware newer than the N2930.
Closing thought: I’ve been running pFSense since the project’s inception, in 2006; 16 years. Prior to that I ran the project it was forked from, m0n0wall. I appreciate that as an appliance distribution changes to pFSense have been slow, but it certainly feels like that in the last couple years at least, development has stalled. Any other suggestions for an OSS router/firewall distro that is more modern than pFSense (needs to be stable)?
Last edited: