psSense and f@h

Judahnator · September 21, 2013

Im getting tired of the cheap router given to me by my ISP, and im looking to upgrade.

I saw Logan's video about pfSense, and thought id try that. It looks like it can do everything i need it to, and has features id like that my current router doesn't have.

My question is, will it affect f@h performance? I would be installing it on a VM on my dedicated folding rig. My Cisco switch would handle all network traffic, i just need a router to hand out IP's and stuff like that.

I would have 3 NIC's on it. The two onboard would be used by the VM, the add-on would be used by the OS

1 (Intel NIC, on-board): in from ISP

2 (Intel NIC, on-board): out to switch

3 (Linksys NIC, pci card): in from switch

Does anyone know how CPU intensive it is? RAM shouldn't be an issue, id just like to be sure there isnt much performance drop

the machine would have an Opteron 4280, 8GB RAM (or something close, cant remember), and is running the latest version of Ubuntu

Whaler_99 · September 21, 2013

Depends on what is going on. Yes, running another VM will affect your performance. By how much, who knows.

Better bet, go buy a Linksys router, don't cheap out. Easier to maintain.

I myself like untangle - very nice solution for a firewall.

Judahnator · September 29, 2013

After a few weekends of tinkering, i came to the conclusion that it would be better to just buy a new router.

Im no networking expert, but from what i understand the two NIC's the VM would use have a hardware address. This means in the VM, the adapters they see would only be "bridged" from the hardware, and not controlling the actual hardware. So, pfSense would only be able to assign IP's to other machines inside its own VM (not possible). I could NAT adapters between VM's inside virtual-box, but nothing outside that.

So, ill either have to get something cheap off craigslist or get a new router.

Thanks for the help anyways

localhost · September 30, 2013

So, pfSense would only be able to assign IP's to other machines inside its own VM (not possible)

Not true.

I had pfSense set up in a VM last month bridged to two network adapters. It worked perfectly as a DHCP server and a firewall. I had one NIC bridged to the WAN and the other bridged to my internal network. As a router, it performed really well. I got line speed throughput from it (50Mbps). All the devices on the physical network got an IP address from it just fine - not just the devices hosted on the VM.

But the problem came with Window's bridged networking drivers. It introduced a significant amount of load on the CPU. From what I hear though, Linux's virtio drivers are much better suited. You should have very little performance overhead. Its not something I have tried though - I have since moved pfSense to a dedicated machine. Just an old laptop I had lying around with a USB network adapter for the WAN side, and the builtin port for the LAN. It doesn't have anywhere near as powerful a CPU as my VM, but general performance is much better.

That said, for a dedicated folding machine, I wouldn't install a router on it. You're going to affect your PPD adversely, or your VM is going to get choked for resources, slowing down your entire network. I highly suggest using an old laptop or a netbook. Or even get a used laptop one from craigslist to tinker with pfSense, rather than a hardware router.