Hi,
I am wanting to create a pfsense firewall for my home, but I am having trouble finding a small form factor computer or cheap ru1 server with 2 nic’s. Any ideas. I’m trying to be thrifty. At least until I require a fortinet 60E.
Thanks.
Pfsense Firewall Hardware
teek82 on 21/03/2020 - 16:38
Comments
Isn't ru1 server expensive? Depending on what you need, those qotom i3 in aliexpress should be enough. You would want a CPU that has AES-NI support if you're going to turn on VPN. I'm using one currently and it's been working quite well for the last 3 months or so.
CPU usage is around 3% and memory usage is around 2MB. My setup
Interfaces: 1 WAN, 2 LAN ports, 1 VLAN for guest wifi, 2 VPN
Services: HAProxy, snort & suricata (both are on and just monitoring at the moment, I haven't decided which one to use), VPN server, ntopng, DNS server, AcmeCan you run an SSL VPN off it?
I was thinking an old server cos it would fit nicely into rack, got a couple of test/production servers on their way.
I thought Acme Packet, lol :D
You can check with Ewaste recycle guys for a real cheap firewall, sometimes they also lists those in ebay with "Make Offer" option and you can get them really cheap. I have found some Cisco routers for just $10-15 like that,
or you can get a cheap 2nd gen i5 SFF PC :D
I've always been intrigued by Hystou
$326 for a j1900 4c4t celeron, two nics. I run a Gigabyte Nuc clone with this CPU for 5+ years all day every day as a vpn + nas + misc box. The four cores really helps i think. Integrated graphics is weak though, no HEVC support.
Your OP could use a price range. Or a ceiling at least. I heard you can get it running on a rpi. Or you could buy some $13 NICs and run pfsense in a VM on one of your existing computers.
I used one of these a couple of years back and it worked fine (assuming you don't want to run a 100mb+ vpn)
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32550695648.html?spm=a2g0s.9…
But I guess all depends on your budget and what you want. A cheap old dell for $50 with a dual nic would also suffice….