On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 05:41:00PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
I've run into a number of low end CPE situations lately where I haven't found anything that does what I want, but I have to believe it is out there. I'm hoping NANOG can help.
An ALIX with pfSense 2.0 (BETA4 at the moment) would fit most of the above. IPv6 support is coming (is mostly there in the kernel, but interface only alpha). If you want to run the snort package I'd however pick a Supermicro Atom system with 2 onboard NICs and add a dual-port Intel NIC, and run pfSense from a small SSD or an USB stick. Albeit a rackmount, the system would be quiet enough for SOHO. There are multiple recommended hardware vendors http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=50 and also commercial support http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=62&Itemid=73
Basically think about a sophisticated home user, or a 1-5 person small office. Think DSL, Cable Modem, maybe Cell Card or ISDN as backups. Looking for an "appliance", very much fire and forget. I probably won't get all the features that I want, but in no particular order:
- Able to load balance over 2 links (probably via NAT).
Check.
- IPv6 support, native or tunnel to tunnelbroker.net type thing.
Requires hacking at the moment, but is coming fast.
- Able to deal with "backup" connectivity, eg. Cell Cards which you only want to use if the primary is down. - User friendly features, e.g. UPNP, NAT-PMP, etc. - Good manageability. ssh to a cli would be a huge bonus, at least the ability to backup a config.
Very well supported. http(s) and ssh both.
- Able to handle decent througput, probably 20Mbps/sec min, 50 would be nice.
ALIX does about 70 MBit/s, an dual-core Atom can probably handle 500 MBit/s.
_ Nice firewall features. - IDS features are cool.
WiFi is not strictly required, but would be cool. Things like "guest" WiFi would be an added bonus.
Something a NANOGer might want at home would be a good baseline. I realize the exact product may differ depending on DSL/Cable/Cell/ISDN, that's ok, let's get some various good solutions going here.
What is the state of the art, and who has it?
I run pfSense both at home (6/100 MBit/s DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem) and in the colo (GBit Ethernet, failover cluster). Very happy.
-- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE