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Embedded firewall hardware

A

Antimatter

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 6, 2003
Messages
342
To begin, I've been using an old Pentium II laptop with two Ethernet interface, anyway, the problem is I need to expand up to at minimum three to four Ethernet interface. Then also the second issue is it needs to be reasonably small, and it certainly would be nice to have as low of a power consumption as possible. It would also be nice to have a single PCI slot or other expansion option for future expansion to include additional Ethernet interface if needed.

It will be serving an 10Mbps WAN, along with doing some IPSEC VPN using AES, which has made the VIA C7 chips very attractive with their on-chip encryption engine.

Anyway I've been doing some researching and searching around and I think I've found several possible products, and I'll go ahead and list them below with an pro and cons list after them.

Soekris:
net5501:
Pro:
-Can use the Serial console to see the BIOS, Bootup, and etc...
-4x LAN + PCI expansion possibility
-Lacks the unneeded shit such as VGA/DVI/Audio/etc...
-256MB to 512MB of on-board RAM
-Only need to purchase the power supply, Case, and DOC/CF

Con:
-The Geode CPU isn't strong enough to be able to support at minimum 2+ IPSEC VPN, from 10Mbps to 25-50Mbps each...
-Fairly new, so may still have support issues
-Heard that the on-board LAN chip all shared one interrupt, could be a source of bottlenecks for LAN to LAN traffic.


PC Engines:
Wrap.1E-2:
Pro:
-Similar as the Soekris, but slower and cheaper
-Only need to purchase the power supply, Case, and DOC/CF

Con:
-End of Life
-ALIX replacement won't come out soon enough, ALIX will also have the same weakish CPU that the net5501 has
-No PCI slot


RouterBOARD:
RouterBOARD 153 & 150:
Pro:
-Price
-5x LAN
-On-board 64MB flash storage, and also support for CF I think
-Only need to purchase the case, power supply, and CF

Con:
-MIPS processor, How fast is it?
-Poor Linux/BSD support I think, and they prefers users to use the RouterOS
-No PCI slot, but with 5x LAN it shouldn't be as big of an issue
-Only 32MB of RAM

RouterBOARD 500:
Pro:
-Similar Pros as the RouterBOARD 153 and 150
-3x LAN
-Has daughter board option for additional 6x LAN
-Double to Triple the speed of the RouterBOARD 153 and 150
-128MB on-board flash + CF support
-Only need to purchase the case, power supply, and CF, and perhaps the daughter board also

Con:
-Similar Cons as the RouterBOARD 153 & 150
-No PCI slot, but with the addition of the 6x LAN daughter board it is not a issue
-Only 32MB to 64MB of RAM
-Unknown if the daughter board 6x LAN interface will share the same interrupt or they get separate ones.


Phylon/Jetway:
Phylon 7F3E-1750:
Pro:
-1x LAN
-Daughter board with additional 3x LAN
-Better Geode Processor, the NX series are more powerful than the LX series in the Soekris board
-PCI slot

Con:
-RealTek LAN chip
-Lots of excess crap included, aka VGA/DVI/Audio/etc...
-Reported crashing/heat issues with the 7F4E board, because of the north bridge getting too hot, best way to defeat it is to improve the cooling, unknown if these crashing/heat issues carries over to the 7F3E and 7F2E boards.
-Unknown if the daughter board 3x LAN interface will share the same interrupt or they get separate ones.
-Need to buy case, RAM, power supply, fan, DOC/CF
-The Geode processor won't be able to keep up with a modern desktop processor or the VIA C7 for encryption, needs to be able to push 2x 10Mbps and 25-50Mbps each.

Phylon 7F2WE-1G2:
Pro:
-Same pros as the 7F3E board above
-VIA C7 CPU, which has SHA-1 & SHA-256 hashing, and improved AES engine on-chip
-PCI slot for expansion

Con:
-Similar cons as the 7F3E board above, with exception of the Geode processor.


MSI:
MSI Industrial 945GM2:
Pro:
-Support for more powerful line of processors such as Core 2 Duo, probably will stick a Celeron M into it
-3x Intel LAN
-PCI, PCI-E 1x and PCI-E 16x slots

Con:
-CPU can be pricey, because it uses the Merom line of processors which are more expensive than the Conroe line.
-Encryption won't be as fast as a VIA C7 with its on-chip encryption
-Too many expansion slots, odds is the PCI-E slots will remain unused unless it gets moved into Gbps routing range
-Needs to buy case, RAM, CPU, fan, power supply, DOC/CF
-Glut of processing power, won't need all of that processing for simple firewall/routing/IPSEC, the VIA C7 would service the route better plus also have an faster encryption speed


Liantec:
EMB-5740
Pro:
-VIA C7
-4x Intel Gb LAN
-Daughter board for additional 4x Intel Gb LAN
-On-board 256 to 512 MB of RAM
-Basically almost like a beefed up Soekris board, but with addition of a daughter board option, and VIA C7 processor

Con:
-Refuse to deal with low volume orders


Commell:
LS-570
Pro:
-4x Intel Gb LAN
-PCI slot for expansion
-Support for more powerful line of processors such as Core 2 Duo, probably will stick a Celeron M into it

Con:
-Same Processor Con's as the MSI board
-Needs to buy case, RAM, CPU, fan, power supply, DOC/CF
-Has more junk packed on, but not as bad as the Phylon and MSI boards
-Needs to buy power supply, case, CPU, RAM, DOC/CF

LE-564
Pro:
-4x LAN, can be RealTek or Intel
-VIA C3 processor
-PCI slot
-128 to 256 MB of RAM soldered on-board.
-Only need to buy the power supply, case and DOC/CF

Con:
-VIA C3 processor has weaker encryption and not as good as the C7 series with some operations
-The RealTek LAN board is the only one for sale, Commell considers the Intel LAN version to be an special order and won't sell low volume runs, so I'm stuck with the RealTek version.

LE-565
Pro:
-VIA C7 processor
-4x Gb LAN
-PCI slot
-On-board 256MB of RAM
-Only need to buy the power supply, case and DOC/CF

Con:
-RealTek Gb LAN



Anyway with all of those system listed above, the main ones that I've been eyeballing are the following:
-Liantec, but they won't sell to me so that's out
-Commell LE-565, but however it has RealTek LAN chip
-RouterBOARD 500, however its MIPS processor, so support is unknown for me
-Phylon 7F2WE, but the reported crashing/heat issues make me wary, also it has lots of excess crap not needed, and also uses RealTek LAN chips


Anyway to answer my main concern, are the RealTek chips really that horrible? I've heard that they're bottom of the barrel chips, they work but they won't work fast and can eat up the processor cycles that I would rather be working on IPSEC/Routing/Firewall/Whatever...

However if the RealTek chips would be adequate for 100mbit network routing and adequate enough to not destroy the CPU while doing near line speed file transfer between LAN clients along with doing LAN to WAN transfers. If they can do that and still have reasonable CPU load for firewalling/routing/whatever, then I'll probably go ahead and get a board with them...

I'm still not sure which would be better the Commell LE-565, or the Phylon 7F2WE board.

The LE-565 has an C7 chip at 1ghz along with 256 MB of on-board RAM, and is 5.24 inch motherboard, however its priced at $461 dollars...

The Phylon 7F2WE that I was thinking of getting has a 1.2 Ghz C7 fanless processor, but I would have to purchase the RAM and daughter board separately. The RAM is priced at $32 for 512MB, and the daughter board is priced at $42 to $52 for the 3x 100mbit to 3x Gigabit LAN. And the board itself is priced at $184, which totals up to $268 dollars, which is cheaper.

However the Phylon 7F2WE is larger, and has more excess crap piled on it that the LE-565 does not.
 
What about something like the via VIA VB6002G board. Runs the older pentium/celeron m's. A good amount cheaper then the core 2 mini-itx boards. Better preformance a lot of vpn boards. Can't comment on the VPN encryption though as I haven't messed with what the c7 chips can do with it. Nice thing about this board though is that the celeron m's are dirt cheap now making for a nice little combo.
 
swatbat said:
What about something like the via VIA VB6002G board. Runs the older pentium/celeron m's. A good amount cheaper then the core 2 mini-itx boards. Better preformance a lot of vpn boards. Can't comment on the VPN encryption though as I haven't messed with what the c7 chips can do with it. Nice thing about this board though is that the celeron m's are dirt cheap now making for a nice little combo.
Click to expand...

I'm actually starting to think about these, because I've been researching on the RealTek NIC and they got very lousy performance on BSD based system, which is rather unfortunate considering most of the system uses RealTek....
 
Antimatter said:
I'm actually starting to think about these, because I've been researching on the RealTek NIC and they got very lousy performance on BSD based system, which is rather unfortunate considering most of the system uses RealTek....
Click to expand...

Yea I mean it has dual nics and a pci slot. With a pentium m or celeron m it should kill a via chip like it was nothing and still be pretty low powered. Should be capable of running vpn fine.
 
Good thread. The liantec and commel ones are nice....I've been 1/2 looking for boards/cases...that are powerful enough to run higher end distros like Endian and IPCop/Copfilter on. Meaning...over a gig of processor, and 512 of RAM, with some onboard LAN ports.

Something like a Linksys RV042 or RV082 case.
 
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