PFSense home brew firewall/router

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I just upgraded to PFSense 2.4 yesterday that was release this week. Much faster and more refined.

Also purchased some hardware from China and some from here to build an AES-NI compliant box in anticipation of 2.5 and higher versions which will require it.

Got a 3rd generation i5 at 2.6 GHz with 4gb DDR-3 Ram and a 250gb SSD. 2 Jumbo frame capable NIC's built into the box.

Excited to build it. Was a fraction of the cost of the actual Netgate boxes and only draws 15 watts.
 
I had a bad upgrade experience through the GUI in the past, but I will likely try it soon. I had to reinstall after a bad update attempt. Luckily I had all my settings backed up, so it was easy to reinstall, but I don't have the time right now to deal with a problem. Did you use one of the micro atx boards for that build?
 
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I used one of those micro PC boxes that you would strap on the back of a monitor. It has an integrated CPU, one SODIMM slot for memory and then MSata/Sata connectors.
 



Shown with MSATA installed but also has SATA connector for traditional 2.5" drive (mounted to the top lid, cable to the board)
 
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My friend called me tonight and said something was up with his internet being sluggish loading sites etc. I connected to his PC remotely and started looking at both of his PC's to see if it was them. Then I remembered I set him up with a linux firewall because he needed to be connected to his shop computers via secure VPN.

Anyway... I login to his router and it has been without a reboot for 716 days!

I force it to reboot, update him to the latest version of PFSense and now all is well.

I'm impressed it went that long without a reboot and held the VPN connection to his shop! The PFSense box at his shop had been up for 700+ days as well so we upgraded that one as well.

crazy2.gif
 
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Originally Posted By: StevieC
My friend called me tonight and said something was up with his internet being sluggish loading sites etc. I connected to his PC remotely and started looking at both of his PC's to see if it was them. Then I remembered I set him up with a linux firewall because he needed to be connected to his shop computers via secure VPN.

Anyway... I login to his router and it has been without a reboot for 716 days!

I force it to reboot, update him to the latest version of PFSense and now all is well.

I'm impressed it went that long without a reboot and held the VPN connection to his shop! The PFSense box at his shop had been up for 700+ days as well so we upgraded that one as well.

crazy2.gif



That's but a blink in the life of many ISR's
wink.gif
 
This ISR has been up since installed:



808 days and counting
wink.gif
Some parts of that site should have an uptime of 4 years, but they may not due to some UPS shuffling I did about 3 years ago when we were still in roll-out.
 
I got my new PFSense hardware that I bought and assembled it last night and put PFSense 2.4 on it. Still have to configure it with all the settings from my existing box but so far it's excellent. I like how small it is and that it only uses 15 watts.
 
Can't you just backup setting on your existing box and then restore those settings on the new setup? Should be up and running and look the same as before in a couple minutes.
 
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Originally Posted By: tmorris1
Can't you just backup setting on your existing box and then restore those settings on the new setup? Should be up and running and look the same as before in a couple minutes.


I have some custom modifications I made that are hardware specific and most likely that is in the backup and doesn't match the new hardware so I decided just to transfer the settings manually. There isn't many so it's not that difficult.
 
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