I wanted to add one more thing. Maybe this will help avoid future misunderstandings...
Ulrik Lunddahl asked: > "Will A SMB without L3 capable switches, that needs routing between 3-4 local > subnets (LAN, SERVERS, WIRELESS/GUEST, OTHER/DMZ) as close to wirespeed as > possible, be happy with a C2758. ?" Now, I realize that the vast majority of users and businesses in the world don’t need a wirespeed router, and they have no idea what one is. Their internet connections just aren't fast enough to require one, and they don’t use them internally. The fact that Ulrik was asking this question means that he not only knows what one is, but he has a specific requirement. I've seen others asking this same question on IRC but with a different requirement: they were getting Google Fiber connections and they knew enough to want a server powerful enough to take full advantage of the connection. One guy I saw chose a system with fairly expensive dual Xeon cpus. I thought he was crazy. Their questions made me curious, and I decided to see just which hardware I had on hand could reach gigabit line-rates. (pkt-gen measures this bandwidth as 714.23 Mbps (raw 999.92 Mbps), at 1.488Mpps) I was surprised at the results. Nics connected to the PCI bus were dogs. Nics connected to the PCI-e bus were lots faster, and some could reach 1.488Mpps. Also, nics with 4 pci-e lanes were faster than nics with 1 pci-e lane. Furthermore, I found that to forward packets at 1.488Mpps requires not only a fast NIC, but also a cpu that was capable of pushing traffic through that fast. The only cpus I had on hand there were capable, was an Intel i5, and a newly released Amd Kaveri APU. (with Steamroller cores) Anyway, Ulrik asked if he'd be happy with a C2758, and I had read on the BSD-RP site that the C2758 board they were testing wasn’t capable of 1.488Mpps. It was about half that, even though it had Intel based nics. And while that’s still blazing fast, I felt it might not be fast enough for the knowledgeable people asking these questions. It would be a shame for anyone to buy something so expensive and expecting certain results, and not getting them. Even a cheap 5 port gigabit switch can forward traffic at 1.488Mpps, so if the devices sold by pfSense and elsewhere are capable of full wirespeed, then those devices would be an excellent buy. More so, because of the tuned software and support they'd be getting along with it. compdoc
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