This one looks more powerful.

Re a PC for PFSense how about this dual lan mini itx board.

those benchmarks I suspect were not done on stock firmware, so I would start by disabling any firewall functions on the router as well as QoS and check nat acceleration is enabled, if that fails try something like tomato shibby firmware and see if that helps.

Gigaclear claim burst speeds up to 1000Mbps and use these;
http://www.genexis.eu/solutions/hybrid-home-gateway-... which include the ONT.

I don't know if they would be compatible with the BT fibre network. They include a SIP VOIP ATA.

I've used many MikroTik Routerboards over the past year or so including the RB450G and now a 2011UAS rack mount (overclocked to 650mhz) and neither of them will route more than about 200 mbit/s or 10,000 pps via pppoe, if you have a few firewall rules this drops even more, add queues and it drops again.

I will probably order a FTTP connection at some point this year, I know I'm going to need something like a dual core at 1ghz+. Or one of the fancy new CCR routers!

In reply to a post by cmn:

I've used many MikroTik Routerboards over the past year or so including the RB450G and now a 2011UAS rack mount (overclocked to 650mhz) and neither of them will route more than about 200 mbit/s or 10,000 pps via pppoe, if you have a few firewall rules this drops even more, add queues and it drops again.

I will probably order a FTTP connection at some point this year, I know I'm going to need something like a dual core at 1ghz+. Or one of the fancy new CCR routers!

Thanks, that's a very useful response.

It's amazing how little information is out there when you deviate from the absolute standard benchmarks of "no firewall, no NAT, just raw throughput", which is fairly meaningless in real life.

I've found a couple of interesting possibilities:

- Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite
http://www.ubnt.com/edgemax#edge-router-lite
Has a dual-core 500 MHz processor, and is supposedly capable of 3 Mbps throughput (the usual raw forwarding benchmark). Seems to retail for £120 - £140, although nobody in the UK seems to have it in stock. Aside: for something with an RRP of USD$99, it's pretty annoying to be gouged £140! It's a very new product, and there don't seem to be any reviews out there.

- There's an Intel Atom N2600 which is dual core 1.6 GHz and a max TDP of 3.5W -- i.e. incredibly power efficient while still being probably super powerful for a router. Even though it was released almost a year ago, there are very few options in mini-itx / nano-itx form, and even fewer with dual (or more) Intel GigE ports. I found a company called Axiomtek who makes the perfect little board (Nano831), but it's a new board, and not available anywhere (no idea even on the price).

http://www.axiomtek.com/products/ViewProduct.asp?vie...
http://www.axiomtek.com/products/ViewProduct.asp?vie...

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

Gigaclear claim burst speeds up to 1000Mbps and use these;
http://www.genexis.eu/solutions/hybrid-home-gateway-... which include the ONT.

I don't know if they would be compatible with the BT fibre network. They include a SIP VOIP ATA.

Man, there's a lot of marketing speak on that site, and not a lot of technical detail!

In reply to a post by gmoorc:

This one looks more powerful.

Re a PC for PFSense how about this dual lan mini itx board.

Those Jetway motherboards would be PERFECT if they had Intel GigE ports.

How about adding this and then 2 of these.

If your problem with the HH3 is just the FON ( BT WIFI sharing) why not just go to the BT site and turn the FON off?

It seems to be a very good router considering it is free to you and delivers all the speed you have got. 310Mb on a 330Mb product is all you can expect after headers etc .

The desktop versions of the Intel Gigabit Ethernet adapters lack useful optimisations from the server versions that FreeBSD (and therefore pfSense) can take advantage of. However, the more modern Intel Gigabit server designs are PCI-Express x4 (or is it x8 - I forget) cards, which are not supported by the majority of ITX boards.

I believe pfSense 2.0.2 has backported the Intel Gigabit driver from FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE to the underlying FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE operating system. If so, this means you can use an Intel I350 card with pfSense 2.0.2.


As I said earlier, I run pfSense on a 1U Dell server box with a dual Intel Gigabit server adapter. I'm intending to get a 32GB SSD to replace the hard disk, which will cut the power consumption significantly. Our switches are VLAN capable, allowing me to have three separate LAN interfaces.

I wouldn't recommend home users to buy rack mount boxes unless they have suitable hosting facilities. We run a home based business, which gave us justification to convert part of our garage to an air-conditioned server room with fibre links to the main house switch. A small format desktop box of some description would be a better choice for most.