School Router / School Filter

dual_brot · July 27, 2020

Hey guys,

I just started a job in a school here in Germany (so apologies in advance if i translate something wrong). One of my first tasks was to get a so called "Time for Kids School Router" (I attached a picture of it's insides), which is a (rackmounted) router / filter customised for use in schools, back running because it had some problems with the HDD and it's constantly running at 58 °C CPU Temp on idle. I was planning to replace it with a NAS SSD. It was purchased in 2014 therefore it's components are a bit old too. It has a Intel Atom D525 (2 cores with 1,8 GHz), 2 GB of DDR2 Ram (upradable to 4 GB) and a total number of 4 Gigabit Networking Ports at the back.

I was wondering whether this performance is still suitable for a school router in 2020. I remembered that you can build your own router with pfsense. So my questions are the following:

Can I do same things with a DIY pfsense router (filtering, logging, etc.) than with this old system?
Are the components of this old machine enough for our use or what would be suitable specs for a DIY school router when I would build one now? We have plenty place in our network cabinet, so it can surely take up to 4U.
Does it make any difference when I would put a 10 Gig NIC in a DIY router?

For context our school has 700+ students, 6 iPad "Boxes" with 15-16 iPads each for use in classrooms (websearching, watching tutorial videos on Youtube, ...), WLAN APs are installed in the buildings (mostly Ubiquiti ap ac lite), students are not allowed to log in to the WLAN with there own devices, only teachers (50+) have the PW to the WLAN, so they can use it with there own devices, we have 2 buildings (both with classrooms, the router is conneted to a DSL Modem in the main building) which are connected with several fibre optic cables and cabeling in the wall is Cat. 7. It is also planned that we will get fibre optic internet this fall.

Thanks for your input in advance.

TT888 · July 27, 2020

Sorry I found something and it is wrong

Edited July 27, 2020 by TT888

Pixel5 · July 27, 2020

a router doesnt need to be really fast so the performance should be fine especially since the network will always be the limiting factor.

You also wont need an SSD, this thing is going to be booted up exactly once and then stay on forever.

10gig nics would only make sense if the room where this is going to be installed as well as your internet connection is 10 gig.

dual_brot · July 27, 2020

Ok, performance wise, i see that. But erverything additionally, like filtering or caching, i would need extra recources, right?

I think more towards future proofing, not dealing with this topic in 2-5 years again. And on the subject of future proofing: A DIY pfsense solution would be in that regard more flexible because if we need a 10 Gig NIC in that box somewhat in the future, we could throw in one later, which I couldn't in that TFK box in the picture above. Am I right?