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Will this work?
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Topic: Will this work? (Read 4793 times)
Complicated
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Will this work?
«
on:
May 06, 2017, 09:05:41 pm »
Hello,
I've used PFSense years ago but never OpnSense. I'd like build the box with a few functions, and before I start spending money and time, I want to find out if this will even work.
What I want to do is build an OpnSense box that will connect to my ISP, act as a VPN server so I can access my lan, and act as a VPN client so I can use a service for outbound traffic. If possible, I'd also like it to act as sort of a 10gb switch. How I wanted to accomplish that is by building the box with 3 2-port 10gb cards, and one gigabit port to connect to the ISP. I'd like the 6 10gb ports to act as a switch on the lan. One would go to a 48 port gigabit switch with an uplink, and the others would be for servers and maybe a desktop or two.
Would that be possible? The card I want to use for all 3 is an HP 516937-B21, which as far as I understand it will work with FreeBSD, but I can't be certain until I test it.
As for the rest of the hardware I'll probably start with an i3-4150, and 8gb of mem, with an SSD.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
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bartjsmit
Hero Member
Posts: 2018
Karma: 194
Re: Will this work?
«
Reply #1 on:
May 06, 2017, 10:00:37 pm »
The main issue is likely to be the L2 10Gbps performance. I doubt that you will be able to get sufficient bandwidth out of the PCI-e bus.
You may get better overall throughput by connecting your servers/desktops with 802.3ad LAG's if you have sufficient ports on the gigabit switch.
Bart...
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Complicated
Newbie
Posts: 3
Karma: 0
Re: Will this work?
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Reply #2 on:
May 07, 2017, 12:46:17 am »
Thanks Bart!
Yeah I know it will be constrained, and I was exaggerating a bit. I really only want to do one, but was curious if it was possible in case I had to do it. The funny thing is they say the cards are 10gb, but a PCI-E 2.0 8x card, which it is, only does 4gb. So I don't even know where they get off calling it a 10gb card.
The switch I have is a Netgear with LAGG, but I have never been able to get it to work properly. I have a Quanta LB4M coming with 2 10gb for upling. 1 for the OpnSense box, and the other for an unRaid box. But I was hoping an extra port could be used to run a connection to a desktop that does video editing to speed up transfers to the NAS. Ideally I'll find a deal on a used 10GB switch and connect the Quanta to it.
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bartjsmit
Hero Member
Posts: 2018
Karma: 194
Re: Will this work?
«
Reply #3 on:
May 07, 2017, 10:59:00 am »
Don't get me started about kit with mismatched L1 and L2 speeds ;-) I'm looking at you, '600' Mbps powerline adapters with aspirational gigabit interfaces.
Merrily going off-topic here; which Netgear switch are you using?
My pre-loved GS724TS effortlessly bonds ports for Windows/Hyper-V 2012 R2, CentOS 7 and vSphere 6 dvSwitches and cost a relative pittance. Certainly likely to remain much cheaper than 10Gbps with SFP's, NIC's and fibre patch cables for a wee while yet.
One thing to look out for with web interfaces of vintage managed switches is the browser version. I am using an old (portable) Firefox version to configure the switch, precisely because newer browsers don't render the port selection fields properly.
Bart...
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Will this work?