Re: Suggestions for low-power gigE firewall?

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 3:43 PM, Chris Nehren <
[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 13:51:45 -0600, John Nielsen wrote:
> > On Jun 15, 2014, at 3:08 AM, Peter Jeremy <[e-mail]> wrote:
> >
> > > On 2014-Jun-13 08:17:33 -0400, Chris Nehren <
> [e-mail]> wrote:
> > >> Speaking of Soekris elsethread, I'm presently interested in
> > >> picking up a small device to use as a router + firewall for my
> > >> home network.
> > >
> > > One thing to keep in mind is that 'gigE firewall' is fairly
> meaningless by
> > > itself.  Most of the load is per-packet and GigE could be anywhere
> between
> > > (roughly) 80kpps and 1.5mpps.
> > >
> > > That said, since you mention 'home network', I presume you don't need
> complex
> > > packet manipulation at wire-speed.  Note that whilst the re(4) driver
> doesn't
> > > have the same comments as the rl(4) driver, you will still need
> significantly
> > > more CPU power to get the same thruput from a RTL8111 as (eg) an em.
> >
> > I recently built a low-power FreeBSD box with this board:
> >
> http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Product/Product_Detail.aspx?DetailID=1499
> >
> > The onboard re(4) NIC needs a patch[1] (present in 10-STABLE but
> > not 10.0-RELEASE) to function properly. Otherwise it's been a smooth
> > ride.
> >
> > It only has one onboard NIC but expansion options include PCI-e
> > (mini and full) and USB 3.0.
> >
> > I have enjoyed using pcengines' Alix boards in the past, but wanted
> > more memory for this application than the new APU boards support.
>
> I'm trying to avoid having to construct a system from parts.
> This board definitely has more potential than anything I've seen
> so far in this research, but at the same time I'd have to play
> parts matching and I'd prefer to stick with Intel if possible.
>
> I'll keep it in mind if I have any future projects, though.
> Thank you!
>
> --
> Chris Nehren
>

As others noted, gigE is rather unspecified. If you want something like
server grade a few of the machines listed at
http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/atom.cfm would be good, and
reasonably low powered. But perhaps more than 400USD, and/or a bit on the
loud side for a home application. They do have an IPMI-port though, which
can come in handy.


As a data point: at work we recently tested forwarding performance of a HP
g7 (with quad core xeon cpu) and intel 10GE card, and maxed out at 650kpps,
which for small packet size is no-where near the wire speed on 1gigE. Just
by loading ipfw module performance dropped noticeably.

Best regards
Andreas
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