Would this work for a pfSense box ?

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Churchill

Admiral
Jan 6, 2016
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What's are the onboard NICs model? Realtek or Intel? There were some slight problems with Realtek NIC's that MIGHT give you an issue but with the release of 2.2 most of those have been resolved.

Also do you plan on using AES encryption for VPN's ? Does this CPU/GPU support AES?

The first glance it look like it would do the job, but I'd dig into the hardware specs more to see what the guts of this device are made of and if you can find one on Alibaba/Ali-Express for cheaper as it looks like a White box device made in china.
 
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canta

Well-Known Member
Nov 26, 2014
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Churchill said:
What's are the onboard NICs model? Realtek or Intel? There were some slight problems with Realtek NIC's that MIGHT give you an issue but with the release of 2.2 most of those have been resolved.

Also do you plan on using AES encryption for VPN's ? Does this CPU/GPU support AES?

The first glance it look like it would do the job, but I'd dig into the hardware specs more to see what the guts of this device are made of and if you can find one on Alibaba/Ali-Express for cheaper as it looks like a White box device made in china.
Click to expand...
pretty decent box, with quad nic intel i211.
A4-6400T, , amd laptop/notebook processor 4.5W TDP
SSE (1, 2, 3, 3S, 4.1, 4.2, 4A), x86-64, AES, AVX, Single-Channel DDR3L-1333a


the one I am worried is msata since going to disappear very quickly due on m.2

quick asking to big brother google...
FITLET-X TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS


Model
Name fitlet-X-LAN Barebone
Part Number FITLET-GX-C64-FLAN-W
Block Diagram fitlet-X Block Diagram
Current HW Revision 1.2
Long Term Availability 2017
Processor
Type AMD A4 Micro-6400T SoC
Cores 64-bit quad core
Clock speed 1.0GHz (boost up to 1.6GHz)
TDP 4.5W
Chipset SoC (CPU and Chipset on the same die)
Memory
Supported 1x SO-DIMM 204-pin DDR3L SDRAM memory slot
Up to 8GB Non-ECC DDR3L-1333 (1.35V)
Installed Not installed
Storage
Supported 1x mSATA slot up to 6 Gbps (SATA 3.0)
Installed Not installed
Graphics
GPU AMD Radeon R3 Graphics
Dual display mode supported
Display Interface 1 HDMI 1.4a up to 1920 x 1200 @ 60Hz
Display Interface 2 HDMI 1.4a up to 1920 x 1200 @ 60Hz
Display Interface 3 N/A
Discrete Graphics N/A
Audio
Codec Realtek ALC886 HD audio codec
Audio Output Analog stereo output
Digital 7.1+2 channels S/PDIF output
3.5mm jack
Audio Input Analog stereo Microphone input
Digital S/PDIF input
3.5mm jack
Networking
LAN 4x GbE LAN ports (RJ-45)
LAN1: Intel I211 GbE controller
LAN2: Intel I211 GbE controller
LAN3: Intel I211 GbE controller
LAN4: Intel I211 GbE controller
Wireless WLAN 802.11b/g/n Wifi module
Connectivity
USB 2x USB 3.0
3x USB 2.0
Serial 1x Serial communication port
COM1: RS232 via mini serial connector
SD Micro-SD slot support SD/SDHC cards
Transfer rates up to 25 MB/s
Special I/O 1x micro SIM slot (6 pins)2
Expansion 1x Full-size mSATA socket (low profile)
1x Half/Full-size mini-PCIe socket (high profile)
1x FACET card interface
Custom connectivity 3 PCIe lanes, adapter half-to-full size required
Advanced Technologies
vPRO No
AMT No
CPU Virtualization Yes
AES Yes
Special Functionality Auto-On
Wake-on-LAN
Wake-on-Timer
PXE Boot
Watchdog
Remote power button
Bootloader
Vendor American Megatrends Inc.
Features TBA
Operating System
Supported Windows 7/8/10, 32-bit and 64-bit
Linux 32-bit and 64-bit
Embedded OS
Official Linux Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon (64-bit)
Installed Not installed
Operating Conditions
Input Voltage Unregulated 10 – 15VDC input1
Power Consumption 4.5W-10.5W
Operating Temperature 1. Commercial (SSD inside): 0°C to 70°C
2. Extended (TE), (SSD inside): -20°C to 70°C
3. Industrial (TI), (SSD inside): -40°C to 70°C
Relative Humidity 10% to 90% (operation)
5% to 95% (storage)
MTTF > 100,000 hours*
Enclosure
Material Aluminum Extrusion
Cooling Passive Cooling Fanless Design
Dimensions 10.8cm x 8.3cm x 2.4cm
Weight 250gr
Package
In the Box 1. fitlet computer
2. Power supply: input 100-240VAC 50/60Hz, 36W output 12VDC 3A,
DC plug lock, attachable NA and EU plugs
3. Video HDMI to DVI adapter
4. Audio 3.5mm to RCA cable
5. 802.11n Wifi module
6. Mini-serial to DB9-male adapter cable
7. mSATA heatsink
Warranty 5 years
Notes 1. Nominal input voltage: 12V
2. For use with Cellular Modem kit
 
Fritz

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
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It uses a Intel I211 GbE controller and the CPU does support AES. I'm still pondering this. It's pricey for what it is. I'm looking for something small power miserly.
 
C

Churchill

Admiral
Jan 6, 2016
838
213
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quad intel nic's plus AES. You can run PFSENSE off a USB drive honestly, so the M-SATA is moot.

Pack in 8GB of RAM and this machine will fly. Don't know about the wireless support in PFSENSE for this device. Might be intel as well but who knows.

sounds like a lovely lil box.
 
R

RTM

Well-Known Member
Jan 26, 2014
956
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The new PC-Engines APU2 board is in the same class, and might we worth looking into.
Just remember that the last APU board from PC-Engines had some BIOS issues, so you might want to ask around what other people have experienced.
 
Deslok

Deslok

Well-Known Member
Jul 15, 2015
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deslok.dyndns.org
They make a point that the 2nic models have intel AC wifi but no real indication on the quad port variant I'd imagine it's a realtek wifi chip based on that
 
C

canta

Well-Known Member
Nov 26, 2014
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Fritz said:
It uses a Intel I211 GbE controller and the CPU does support AES. I'm still pondering this. It's pricey for what it is. I'm looking for something small power miserly.
Click to expand...
I have proxmox running on a4-500 minitix with additional dual port ethernet i340 and 2x4G ddr3l

very snappy due on quad cores and AES.

since A4-5000 has dual single DDR3 slot. I just installed available unused 2x4g ddr3l.

running one router vm, one vpnclient vm, two vms for housekeeping.

it was running j1800. and had not much power that cause slow responses and froze on some running VMs. I replaced A4-5000.

if you want to build by yourslef, get A4-5000 (15W TDP,faster too), and get quad/dual i350/i340 + ram (max is 16G)
 
E

eroji

Active Member
Dec 1, 2015
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You are better off looking at a N3700/3710 platform. That should be the latest gen with AES support.
 
M

mstone

Active Member
Mar 11, 2015
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eroji said:
You are better off looking at a N3700/3710 platform. That should be the latest gen with AES support.
Click to expand...
Or even N3150. Those things are almost free, and small router doesn't demand much CPU.
 
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bds1904

Active Member
Aug 30, 2013
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mstone said:
Or even N3150. Those things are almost free, and small router doesn't demand much CPU.
Click to expand...
The little n3150 box I got with dual realtek nic's routes 870mbit and does OpenVPN aes-256 at 110mbit/sec. Consumes 13w at peak load and a idle wattage so low I can't measure it (which means sub 5w). Not a bad little box.

With OpenVPN being a single-cpu bound process I would be interested to see what it'll do with 4 connections. I would be willing to bet 250mbit, combined total to different sites of course.

I'm trying to get my hands on a quad-nic j1900 box too. Actually I am looking for 2 of them for a carp setup.
 
Deslok

Deslok

Well-Known Member
Jul 15, 2015
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deslok.dyndns.org
Good point on the 3700 intel lists it as having AES-NI take a look at this board SUPERMICRO MBD-X11SBA-LN4F-O Mini ITX Server Motherboard Socket FCBGA1170 Intel N3700 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz DDR3 SO-DIMM, 204-pin gold-plated DIMMs - Newegg.com

However this is a bit troubling the two trade punches with the N3700 winning most of the time except in AES accelleration, is AMD's implementation of AES better(at least on these low power chips) or perhaps did intel disable it in the NUC somehow that I'm using a a reference here

CompuLab fitlet-H vs INTEL_ NUC5PPYB - Geekbench Browser
 
B

bds1904

Active Member
Aug 30, 2013
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canta said:
j1900 does NOT have AES.
Click to expand...
That is correct, and for my application it really isn't required. Pfsense OpenVPN doesn't take well to AES-NI anyways as the openssl implementation doesn't fully utilize it. Pfsense IPSEC does take full advantage of it. When playing with AES-NI on the n3150 with OpenVPN on pfsense i saw little to no improvement with it enabled. 5 to 10 mbit improvement, that's it. Ipsec performance doubled.

Ether way the j1900 runs 100mbit OpenVPN tunnels all day. I have used it before and had a good experience. I don't really need any more than 50mbit OpenVPN thruput anyways.
 
C

canta

Well-Known Member
Nov 26, 2014
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bds1904 said:
That is correct, and for my application it really isn't required. Pfsense OpenVPN doesn't take well to AES-NI anyways as the openssl implementation doesn't fully utilize it. Pfsense IPSEC does take full advantage of it. When playing with AES-NI on the n3150 with OpenVPN on pfsense i saw little to no improvement with it enabled. 5 to 10 mbit improvement, that's it. Ipsec performance doubled.

Ether way the j1900 runs 100mbit OpenVPN tunnels all day. I have used it before and had a good experience. I don't really need any more than 50mbit OpenVPN thruput anyways.
Click to expand...
ok should be good

I had j180 (dual core) running proxmix, this did not work well, since router running openvpn server and other runngin vmopenvpn client running, encryption taxing is not good.

on A4-500, I change the cpu type in vm configuration to cpu access directly to utilize AES. this works no hick-up ,
 
C

canta

Well-Known Member
Nov 26, 2014
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Deslok said:
Good point on the 3700 intel lists it as having AES-NI take a look at this board SUPERMICRO MBD-X11SBA-LN4F-O Mini ITX Server Motherboard Socket FCBGA1170 Intel N3700 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz DDR3 SO-DIMM, 204-pin gold-plated DIMMs - Newegg.com

However this is a bit troubling the two trade punches with the N3700 winning most of the time except in AES accelleration, is AMD's implementation of AES better(at least on these low power chips) or perhaps did intel disable it in the NUC somehow that I'm using a a reference here

CompuLab fitlet-H vs INTEL_ NUC5PPYB - Geekbench Browser
Click to expand...
I am thinking, AMD has double cache memory ..
 
M

mstone

Active Member
Mar 11, 2015
505
118
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Deslok said:
Good point on the 3700 intel lists it as having AES-NI take a look at this board SUPERMICRO MBD-X11SBA-LN4F-O Mini ITX Server Motherboard Socket FCBGA1170 Intel N3700 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz DDR3 SO-DIMM, 204-pin gold-plated DIMMs - Newegg.com

However this is a bit troubling the two trade punches with the N3700 winning most of the time except in AES accelleration, is AMD's implementation of AES better(at least on these low power chips) or perhaps did intel disable it in the NUC somehow that I'm using a a reference here

CompuLab fitlet-H vs INTEL_ NUC5PPYB - Geekbench Browser
Click to expand...
I'd personally hold out for a transparent AES test (with units) before too much panic. To put it into perspective, my N3150 (same base rate, lower turbo) can do 145MByte/s per core on 16byte encrypts. If that's a bottleneck for you, then get a straightforward test on the AMD platform and see how it compares.
 
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