[talk] pfSense home unit

Isaac (.ike) Levy ike at blackskyresearch.net
Fri Jan 12 13:01:48 EST 2018


Hi Brian,

Top posting aside, my comments inline.

Full disclosure: I reccommend OPNSense as an early contributor to the project, (even though I had contributed to PFSense from it's beginning until OPNSense).

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018, at 9:51 AM, Shawn Webb wrote:
> Hey Brian,
> 
> OPNsense works great on the APU2c4 devices from PC Engines (link
> below). Both of your requirements can be met with OPNsense on it.
> 
> PC Engines: https://pcengines.ch/
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -- 
> Shawn Webb
> Cofounder and Security Engineer
> HardenedBSD
> 
> Tor-ified Signal:    +1 443-546-8752
> GPG Key ID:          0x6A84658F52456EEE
> GPG Key Fingerprint: 2ABA B6BD EF6A F486 BE89  3D9E 6A84 658F 5245 6EEE
> 
> On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 06:47:34AM -0800, Brian Cully wrote:
> > 	I???m looking to buy a pfSense router for home use, and was looking for
> > recommendations. I don???t want to spend too much money, and the Netgate
> > ones seem kind of pricy and overkill for what I need.

I'll second Shawn on this, there was just a thread on PCEngines this in December, here's my long ramble:
http://lists.nycbug.org/pipermail/talk/2017-December/017422.html
In short- the PCEngines people are awesome, the gear is stellar for your purposes.

PCEngines board - apu2c4 - $132
http://pcengines.ch/apu2c4.htm

Case - case1d2blku - $10.00
(Case can be black, red, blue)
http://pcengines.ch/case1d2blku.htm

AC adapter 12V 2A US plug - ac12vus2 $4.40
http://pcengines.ch/ac12vus2.htm

SSD M-Sata 16GB MLC - $17.80
http://pcengines.ch/msata16g.htm

$ 164.20 - Each Router + shipping.


> > 
> > 	The home is served by a 200Mbps cable modem, so I???d think basically
> > any router would work fine. My main needs are:
> > 
> > 	1) Ad blocking. I???ve gotten to the point where I want to put this on
> > the router itself, since they???re in goddamn everything and there???s no
> > such thing as Little Snitch for iOS.

https://devinstechblog.com/block-ads-with-dns-in-opnsense/
https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=1351.0

Loads of ways to get this done.

> > 
> > 	2) IPv6 tunnel with tunnelbroker.net.
> > 
> > 	I???m pretty sure any pfSense device can deal with point 2, but I???d
> > like to be sure before I drop the cash. As for ad blocking, I think I
> > might need a little more horsepower to handle it. I also get the
> > impression that the only platform that has universal support is amd64.

https://wiki.opnsense.org/manual/how-tos/ipv6_tunnelbroker.html

> > 
> > 	So can anyone recommend something, preferably amd64-based, that???ll
> > deal with the above, and preferably under $200?

That PCEngines gear listed above does it- and, if you hate it as a network appliance, you can always drop in a 500G-1T msata SSD and you have a perfectly awesome low-power server running any OS you want.

Best,
.ike


> > 
> > -bjc
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