Net4801 Replacement

[George Rosamond]

Charles Sprickman:
> On Jan 22, 2014, at 3:27 PM, Pete Wright wrote:
> 
>> I recently replaced my Net4801 with a pc-engines ALIX board.  been very
>> happy with it so far.  it has been out performing my Net4801 which isn't
>> too much of a shocker due to the more performant CPU.
>>
>> I purchased it from netgate.com - this is pretty much the kit i bought:
>>
>> http://store.netgate.com/ALIX2D3-2D13-Kit-Black-Unassembled-P172.aspx
> 
> I keep being tempted by small units like this $100 PC:
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856119081
> 
> Of course, other than USB, no way to get more ethernet ports.  I do
> wonder if USB support in FreeBSD/pfSense is good enough to rely on
> for sub-100Mb/s WAN-side connections.
> 
> This one has dual ethernet, so that would cover my LAN plus the
> cable connection, and I could relegate the DSL backup to a USB
> ethernet adapter.  The specs also claim a PCI-e slot, but I'm not
> clear on how you'd jam a network card in there:
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856205007
> http://www.oemproduction.com/products/2700L2D-MxPC.asp
> 
> Many of those cheap-o boxes have bad reviews, but it's mostly people
> complaining that an old Atom can't do 1080p or run Minecraft
> properly (derp).

LOL... yeah, I know.   Hard to get through the reviews.  'one star'
since it didn't include a power adapter.  If Soekris or Alix boards were
on Amazon, they'd be full of one-star review.

> 
> I'm still relying on a Dell GX-110 with a P-III 600MHz.  It's OK,
> but if if OOL bumps the speed much beyond what they have now, that
> box is going to be a chokepoint.
> 
> Is ARM on FreeBSD progressing at a pace where we might one day be
> able to load pfSense up on a routerboard?  For reasons too
> complicated to explain at the moment, I have four of these on the
> workbench, and the hardware is cool.  iptables though is making me
> want to murder things though.
> 
> http://routerboard.com/RB2011UiAS-RM (5x GigE, 5x FastE, $120)
> 
> http://routerboard.com/RB1100AHx2 (13 GigE, $350)
> 

I thought routerboard is PPC.. not ARM...

(PPC.. .yeah, that architecture people have been telling OpenBSD to drop
to save power costs....)

And the ARM stuff is moving along... lots of boards mostly supported,
but there's issues on and off.  Nothing seems quite there just yet,
AFAIK.  Not sure if any have more than one NIC.

GJB (onlist) is looking at producing an official image for the RPi based
on 10-RELEASE.

I had heard pfSense was looking at ARM carefully, but it's been a while.

Next daycon on "beyond x86"?

g