Hardware recommendations

Greetings,

I am looking for a hardware recommendation to use in my home, I was initially thinking a Pi 3, but that may not be enough muscle wise. I am have a 2 gig fiber connection in my home, with about 30 devices connected. I am looking for hardware that will allow me to stick as close to my 2 gig speed with utilizing IDS. I also have another location with a one gig connection, would I need half the memory and cpu to run that same setup at that location? Thanks!

Hi,

first, welcome to the IPFire community. :slight_smile:

Please refer to this wiki page for information on hardware, system requirements of IPFire, buying considerations and some turn-key appliances.

While you usually don’t need too much RAM and CPU power for running IPFire (4 GB RAM and a dual-core CPU with more than 1.5 GHz should be fine for most small networks), fast and good NICs are really important. Raspberry Pis don’t fit the bill here - you can expect them to work fine for a “firewall in a pocket” solution you need once in a while on travels or similar, but do not want them to serve as your primary firewall in your home.

Thanks, and best regards,
Peter MĂĽller

I did read that but I wanted to make sure I was getting something sufficient for my needs. Also, can I use IPFire with a pihole setup?

Hi,

I see. Personally, I would recommend this appliance for your scenario, as it fits the bill, is tested and known to work with IPFire perfectly, and future-proof.

(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the company selling it. :slight_smile: )

This question has been discussed multiple times. Please refer to threads such as this one for further information on combining IPFire and PiHole.

Thanks, and best regards,
Peter MĂĽller

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You have 2 Gbit/sec on WAN?

You should have at least a Board with 2,5Gbit/sec or better for RED onboard (or buy a addon card) and buy a additional 10GBits/sec addon Card for GREEN to connect to a 10G switch.

Yes, I do. I have Xfinity Gigabit Pro.

Thanks for the reply,

Are the cards in that hardware swappable? Since 1 gig is a bit low for a two gigabit WAN connection.

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No they can’t and the PC doesn’t fit your needs. You will need to build the PC on your own. With 30 (linked) network members you will also need a 10G switch with lots of ports. This will be 19" so I think you will have a 19" rack and therefore you can build up a 19" 2U/3U/4U firewall.

With this built, I wouldn’t call it “home”. This is small business.

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I love doing stuff like that, would it be a regular tower PC or is there a recommendation for a place to get hardware from? If it’s a regular.PC, thats not too difficult of a task, I already have the switching side under control. I’m eyeing doing a 2U server chassis for it and than picking parts from there. Power consumption is not too much of a concern.

ATM I build small business Firewalls with the Chenbro RM24100-L, MSI MS-98N9 mainboard and the Intel 10100T(E). I don’t have an AMD option because of not finding reliable IPC/industrial AM4 ATX boards.

In case of 10Gbit is use Intel X550-T2/X710-T4 cards. Coolers are bought from Noctua for the case and Dynatron for the cpu cooler.

I did some digging and I found this, I’m leaning towards getting this, thoughts?