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Need to build a system capable of maintaining 200Mbs WAN speed

Hi everyone.

I am ready to build/purchase a system to install ASG v8 for home use.  The system at a minimum needs to be able to maintain 100Mbs to the WAN, preferably closer to 200Mbs.

I currently have 100Mbs connection for my internet (Japan), but the ISP's now offer speeds twice that, so when I upgrade the line I want to be able to maintain my maximum throughput and still be able to run all security features.

I have been browsing the forums for about a week now and have already learned a great deal.  I was hoping that some of you may have knowledge of the hardware required to maintain these speeds.

I am very open to suggestions and want to purchase quality parts.  Not knowing how powerful the system really needs to be though, I don't want to go overboard.

I will probably go with good quality Intel NICs, maybe an SSD, and as much memory as needed.  I guess the CPU would probably be the major thing I am unsure of.

Thanks!

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0 TheDrew over 14 years ago in reply to William Warren

a high end i7 is total overkill..you'll just be wasting a bunch of electricity. Stick with a dual core HT i3 of around 2.5 ghz or so. that'll be enough to handle your line speeds.

Agreed. And for the OP, an i7 would be overkill.

What I probably should've mentioned is that (in my case) the i7 is going to form the core of a small ESXi based "datacenter in a box" that I'm building for use at home as a testing lab. I already have Windows Home Server (2011 aka Vail, still in Beta), Astaro, and several Linux VM's slated to migrate to it once it's built.

It's currently running on a small Pentium Dual Core which is hurting a bit for CPU & memory.[;)]
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0 BarryG over 14 years ago

OK... So will ESXi support the AES-NI instructions in VMs?

Barry
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0 Rabbix over 14 years ago in reply to BarryG

Thanks guys for all the recommendations so far.  I am probably still a month away from placing the order for the components:

Right now I am leaning to a 1U barebones server chasis that includes the MB and powersupply, an LGA1156 i-5 Xeon CPU, 8GB of Ram, and a 7200RPM hard drive.

I can build this setup for under $800 which is an acceptable price to me considering what security appiances like this cost.  You cannot beat that Astaro lets you have the software free for home use.
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0 TheDrew over 14 years ago in reply to BarryG

OK... So will ESXi support the AES-NI instructions in VMs?

I did some research into the issue and from what I understand, it does. ( link )

From that KB, when a vCenter host is set to EVC mode "Intel Xeon 32nm Core i7", ESXi "exposes additional CPU features including AES ..."

That's referring to EVC modes within vCenter but even on the free ESXi host I currently have both /proc/cpuinfo (linux) and CPU-z (Windows) both show the full CPU specs within each guest.
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0 BarryG over 14 years ago

I did some iperf tests on my Atom n270 (1 core with HyperThreading) Astaro 7.509 Firewall...

440mbps PacketFilter only
92mbps afcd (flow classifier) IM and/or P2P (performance is the same with 1 or both enabled)
65mbps snort (5386 IPS rules Active)
53mbps snort + afcd

testing details at
https://community.sophos.com/products/unified-threat-management/astaroorg/f/52/t/27167

Barry
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