I’ve been really happy with buying a ~$200 mini PC and putting OPNsense on it. You just have to make sure it has two Ethernet ports. OpenWRT is another great option if you don’t have the money for that.
There are white box n100 based fanless devices on Amazon for this purpose. They come with four ports and all you need to do is add a ssd https://a.co/d/09BB3vAJ
You don’t need much. A raspberry pi3, or similar, with two ports will do it. 4GB memory is way more than enough even if you’re loading all the pfblocker block lists, and 1GB will do it if you aren’t.
And it really is nice. You get to do all sorts of cool networking stuff.
Any tiny/mini/micro systen, get one second hand from EBay, get the Allstate insurance option in case it turns out to be a dudd, and slap opnsense on that thing. Most of their energy pull will be sub 15w, many even sub 10w.
A NanoPI with OpenWRT (there is a variant that NanoPIs have that is called FriendlyWRT, but don’t use that, it sucks), they have an ARM CPU so the power usage is low. My NanoPI R5C can reach up to 600Mbit/s (up/down) with SQM enabled (Smart Queue Management, to keep your latency down on high network usage), and 800Mbit/s with something called Hardware offloading.
Technically any x86 PC with the ability to have two separate Ethernet ports would work, but unless you plan on grabbing a NetPC from the 2000s/2010s (which will have dogshit processors and probably no expansion slots for the second Ethernet port), you might be out of luck.
Although if there is an ARM based version of the software (or if you could run it through a compatibility layer like FEX somehow), there’s tons of low power devices that could be repurposed.
for a miini PC I recomend the M720q from Lenovo … it’s kind of overkill but it has a PCIE slot which means you can add a network card inside the original case and because it’s 16x you can go up to 10G if you wanted to.
I add external 2.5G cards on my other models via the USB3.0 ports but it’s messy and then I have to setup LACP on the switch
From a quick look at the documentation, if the hardware has WiFi capability you can configure OPNsense to be an access point as well. Personally, I keep the two separate: I have a small N200-based box as my OPNsense router and a separate access point running OpenWRT for the wifi devices on my network.
I can’t find anything that doesn’t bottleneck my available bandwidth of 2Gb/s. I’ve looked, they get expensive after 1Gb/s speed. Couldn’t find anything mini PCs that can do it.
I have the same 2Gb/s speed at my place. Its $10 more a month than 1Gb/s, making it easy to justify. I have no need for it besides bragging rights haha
I have 2 Gb/s down using opnsense on a n150 mini pc. The one I got has 2 x 2.5gb ports. I don’t have too many devices, but I’ve never had issues getting that full download speed. During downloads where I hit my full speed, it hits about 30% usage. During normal usage like games/streaming/web browsing I don’t see above 10% usage.
I’ve been really happy with buying a ~$200 mini PC and putting OPNsense on it. You just have to make sure it has two Ethernet ports. OpenWRT is another great option if you don’t have the money for that.
That sounds really cool. Any idea for a low powered (as in doesn’t draw a lot of power) OPNsense option?
There are white box n100 based fanless devices on Amazon for this purpose. They come with four ports and all you need to do is add a ssd https://a.co/d/09BB3vAJ
how low are we talking? I run a homelab with mini pc’s and pi
The raspberry pi runs at 3-9W each mini pc runs at 25-65w
Beware tho … open sense is not stable on ARM, and requires some hacking around to work
You don’t need much. A raspberry pi3, or similar, with two ports will do it. 4GB memory is way more than enough even if you’re loading all the pfblocker block lists, and 1GB will do it if you aren’t.
And it really is nice. You get to do all sorts of cool networking stuff.
Any tiny/mini/micro systen, get one second hand from EBay, get the Allstate insurance option in case it turns out to be a dudd, and slap opnsense on that thing. Most of their energy pull will be sub 15w, many even sub 10w.
A NanoPI with OpenWRT (there is a variant that NanoPIs have that is called FriendlyWRT, but don’t use that, it sucks), they have an ARM CPU so the power usage is low. My NanoPI R5C can reach up to 600Mbit/s (up/down) with SQM enabled (Smart Queue Management, to keep your latency down on high network usage), and 800Mbit/s with something called Hardware offloading.
Technically any x86 PC with the ability to have two separate Ethernet ports would work, but unless you plan on grabbing a NetPC from the 2000s/2010s (which will have dogshit processors and probably no expansion slots for the second Ethernet port), you might be out of luck.
Although if there is an ARM based version of the software (or if you could run it through a compatibility layer like FEX somehow), there’s tons of low power devices that could be repurposed.
for a miini PC I recomend the M720q from Lenovo … it’s kind of overkill but it has a PCIE slot which means you can add a network card inside the original case and because it’s 16x you can go up to 10G if you wanted to.
I add external 2.5G cards on my other models via the USB3.0 ports but it’s messy and then I have to setup LACP on the switch
How do you type your username to login?
The 🦄🦄🦄 you see is only the displayed name, not the account name :)
That doesn’t transmit wifi though, right?
From a quick look at the documentation, if the hardware has WiFi capability you can configure OPNsense to be an access point as well. Personally, I keep the two separate: I have a small N200-based box as my OPNsense router and a separate access point running OpenWRT for the wifi devices on my network.
I can’t find anything that doesn’t bottleneck my available bandwidth of 2Gb/s. I’ve looked, they get expensive after 1Gb/s speed. Couldn’t find anything mini PCs that can do it.
What is your use case for that kind of speed in a residential setting?
I have the same 2Gb/s speed at my place. Its $10 more a month than 1Gb/s, making it easy to justify. I have no need for it besides bragging rights haha
It’s just buying stability in peak moments. Lots of family member members, and lots of devices.
I have 2 Gb/s down using opnsense on a n150 mini pc. The one I got has 2 x 2.5gb ports. I don’t have too many devices, but I’ve never had issues getting that full download speed. During downloads where I hit my full speed, it hits about 30% usage. During normal usage like games/streaming/web browsing I don’t see above 10% usage.
Any chance you remember where you got it from? Did it come with the two NICs at 2.5Gb/s out the box?
Looks like they don’t make it anymore but I got the aoostar n1 pro on amazon. I would try eBay or AliExpress to find something similar. https://www.amazon.com/AOOSTAR-N1-PRO-Upgraded-Full-Featured/dp/B0F9K1G96Q
It has both 2.5 gigabit ports built in. Its basically purpose built for opnsense. I just connected a multi gig switch and a WAP and it’s great.
Interesting, found this for $420
https://a.co/d/04JpAcyp