[Soekris] OpenBSD home firewall

[Jonathan Groll]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 03:44:44AM +0800, Jesper Andersen wrote:
> Currently I have an old AMD K6 233MHz, 128 MB ram PC running linux as 
> firewall, openVPN box in my parents house. I was thinking about replacing 
> it with a soekris board with OpenBSD. To have a smaller box using less 
> power and to try out OpenBSD in real use.
> 
> I was thinking about the 4501-30 or 4801-50. The question is how much is 
> needed. Currently I see 10-15% cpu usage from openvpn when transferring 
> 1mbit/sek. I expect openvpn don't have to handle more than 2mbit/sek 
> traffik. I saw someone say something about interupts from the NIC setting 
> some limit to how much traffic this boards can handle. Is there any truth 
> that. What is the limit? I expect it will have to handle 20mbit speed 
> within the foreseeable future.
> Can I expect the 4501-30 to be enough or should I spend a bit more for the 
> 4801-50, also to have a bit more spare resources for later.
> 

Yes, there were originally problems with the sis openbsd driver.

See this thread:
http://lists.soekris.com/pipermail/soekris-tech/2004-May/005969.html

I can't recall if they were resolved. In any case, even with the
problems the limit was 30Mbit/s. Buy the more expensive soekris, you
won't regret it.

There was also another thread discussing freebsd performance:
http://lists.soekris.com/pipermail/soekris-tech/2005-April/008130.html

Cheers,
Jonathan