M0n0wall CPU thoughts

[GotNoRice]

Right now my router uses m0n0wall and runs on an old Pentium-2 450mhz. Stripped down and running off a Compact Flash card I've got power consumption down to only 18 watts. Unfortunately the processor appears to limit me to about 40Mbps max throughput.

Prior to that I was running a Pentium-3, 600mhz I believe, and that was good for about 60Mbps but that rig pulled about ~55 watts from the wall, or about 3 times what my current router uses.

It's not a huge concern because at the moment this only applies to my speeds while I powerboost. My cap kicks in and limits transfers to ~24Mbps. My testing has shown however that without the router as a bottleneck I am able to powerboost to well over 100Mbps. I am also looking to upgrade to the 50Mbps if not the 100Mbps tier in the coming years.

At this point, most of the spare computers in my closet that I could turn into a router are all Pentium-4 based. I have an old Compaq 1.4Ghz Pentium 4, two Sony 2.4Ghz Pentium-4s, a Dell 2.8Ghz Pentium-4, and finally a Compaq with an Athlon XP 3000+.

It would seem to me that if I make the transition from a Pentium-2/3 processor to a Pentium-4 processor (or the Athlon XP) for my router, efficiency is going to go out the window. I'm thinking that what I should really be looking for is something along the lines of a 1Ghz Pentium-3 or maybe even one of the Tualatin versions that is clocked even higher. That should give me the throughput I'm looking for without the inefficiency of running a Pentium-4. Would you agree with this thought?

I am also looking to make the switch from m0n0wall to PFSense at some point, which will likely increase my processing requirements even further.

I know I could go with something like an Atom, but I'm trying to keep this low-cost and use mostly recycled parts.

What CPU are you running in your custom-built router?

 

[Ur_Mom]

If you go with a P3, I have a 1.3 (possibly 1.4) out of an HP server you could have. If that would work. Are you going to be running snort or anything like that, or just a straight firewall?

I was planning on going with an Athlon XP 2200+ with 512MB RAM for a general pfSense based firewall. Should be plenty, as I can't even go higher than 10Mb in the area for a WAN link. Probably WAY overkill, but I could run snort (if it's stable yet on pfSense).

 

[D-EJ915]

I ran an old Dell 1GHz P3 for a while and it worked fine, used more power than it needed to but it operated perfectly, I used Intel NICs in it though not the onboard. For network traffic it's mainly just plaintext so the faster the CPU the better even if it is a P4.

 

[450]

Why not sell your extra stuff on craigslist and get an intel atom based rig?

 

[cleric_retribution]

I am also looking to make the switch from m0n0wall to PFSense at some point, which will likely increase my processing requirements even further.

I know I could go with something like an Atom, but I'm trying to keep this low-cost and use mostly recycled parts.

What CPU are you running in your custom-built router?

cleric@procyon ttyp0 [Sat Jul 16 14:32] (~)
$ cat /var/log/dmesg.boot | grep CPU:
CPU: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU 330 @ 1.60GHz (1618.44-MHz 686-class CPU)


IF you want low power utilization, I think you're best off to look towards newer parts (board, cpu)

I switched from a dual pentium 3 system with a few network interfaces down to an Atom based system based on the Intel D945GCLF2 motherboard. I paired it with an M350 Mini-ITX case and a 65w PicoPSU and a 32GB SSD.

The system runs fanless, draws around ~25w under load, and I utilize VLANs for splitting out the single network interface on the Intel board out to my network. I'm able to push nearly full gigabit throughput (~950mbps via iperf) through the network interface without issue.

I'm running PFsense 1.2.3 doing QoS, Snort, Ntop, etc, and have had no issues with performance of any of the software either.

 

[tdg]

I run a P3 866 in my pfSense routers as they are the lowest power consumers for the performance, short of new stuff like the Atom. With a single stick of RAM, a laptop hard drive and 1 off-board NIC power consumption was 23 watts when I last checked with a KillAWatt. However if power consumption is your primary goal and you're willing to spend $100, go with an Atom solution.

 

[robvas]

Go with an Atom, we were using an old 2.4GHz Pentium 4 (power sucker) and it would hit about 30% CPU usage when we'd max out our connection (50mb), we only had 100mb NIC's anyway.

Now it's just one of our VM's in ESX

 

[jschuricht]

I run a PIII 1.26s in a old Intel 815eea2 board with three pro1000 nics and Monowall. Couldn't tell you what it draws but before I moved to a Timewarner area, I was able to briefly hit >100mb when boosting with a few VPN's going and CPU usage was minimal.

 

[YURBAN]

First Time i Build my m0n0wall with Celeron Tualatin 1.0 OC'ed to 1.3 (FSB 133) and 256MB PC-133, One SSD 60GB with 'IDE to Sata Adapter' and 4 NIC's D-Link: 2x 520TX and 2x DGE 530T, and about 6 months this machine works fine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNDKRyjLWIA
Now i Move The Configured SSD to 'New' AMD Athlon XP 2500+ with GA-7N400 and 2 Sticks 1GB DDR1 400 MHz, and all works still fine, i've been detect MAX CPU Load is 53% with torrent downloads
I Make Little Mobo Upgrade, But Result looks so nice )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7IQZMsBgh0

 

[BigBadAl]

I currently run Untangle on an Intel Atom D525 dual core @ 1.8Ghz.

Think that pulls around 19 watts and runs my 60Mb connection just fine.

Tomorrow though (Friday) I'm being upgraded to 152Mb (advertised) so we'll see how that pans out.

I get a consistent 65-66Mb out of my 60Mb so hopefully I'll see a little more than the advertised 152Mb.

Also, my untangle is the bare minimum, no additional packages...

Web filter lite
Virus blocker lite
Firewall
Intrusion prevention
Ad blocker

I also have OpenVPN on there but that doesn't see much traffic, although with my upgrade by upstream goes from sub-3Mb to 12Mb, again, advertised, so we'll see how that goes too.

 

[DeChache]

I have an old atom board I think its a D510 sitting in the corner that used to be a Untangle/PFSense box if you want it. Cheap and recycled. Handled my 50 meg connection fine. I just moved to a Edge Router.

 

[Nicklebon]