I said I wasn’t going to but then I’ve lost access to some of the packages I was using and am unable to install any more so it was time to sidegrade to the CE from Plus. I’ve watched Tom from Lawrence Systems YouTube video on how to do it a couple of times and to be fair the process was perfectly easy. Backup>Reinstall>Restore
Whilst my firewall was down I took advantage and upgraded the BIOS which had eluded me on the last shutdown but this time it was done without issues.
Back up and running and absolutely nothing specal to report which is kind of what you want of a firewall. No problems, no oddities.
Still got this odd “can’t reach Gb” problem on the WAN which I think is down to signle core performance but I can lve with it for now being as changes may be coming soon in that department anyway.
I was recently caught out by the whole pfSense+ is going to be chargeable going forwards scandal that I’m sure many other pfSense users have been, I’ve kerbed my outrage, it’s not life ending, I moved from CE to Plus only a month before this happened and to be honest, apart from the inconvenience of reinstalling to move back – I can live with it howevere there is a similar alternative, a fork of the pfSense build. OPNsense. Link to said announcement.
What a nightmare that’s been!! I had it in my mind to swap the SSD my Dell R210 was running on anyway so whipped out the old Crucial and popped in a new one, installed OPN sense and that’s where the problems all started! Huge memory spikes (filling the 8GB hardware and 8GB swap), the firewall then proceeded to drop some services due to the memory being so high, CPU spiking to 60% plus randomly for periods. VLANs not working and I use a LAGG setup for my downlinks to LAN (I can so I do) also not coming up when needed meaning I had a situation where I managed to lock myself out due to the LAGG not coming up, a reset to factory and then start config again. Just a general nightmare.
Sat contemplating my poor life decisions, I remebered I swapped out the SSD in full, what had taken me the best part of 2 and a half hours, was reverted in a shutdown, SSD swap and power up (30 seconds max) to resume normality. Yes I have a CE reinstall to do and it does bug me I never get 1Gb any more only 850Mb (first world problem) but I am going to concentrate now on moving the interfaces to the built in ethernet and swap out the PCiE card for something 10Gb flavour.
I have read so much up on moving pf to opn and I was super excited to do so but pf for me is currently still where it’s at.
Even up to having the FTTP installed I was a MikroTik router through and through kidn of guy however running my CHR in the way I did meant some trade offs were made and my day to day work life forking further away from Mikrotik based or even theorised usage meant that my mind went that way for my home network as well. I did the unthinkable.
I’ve repurposed my DellR210ii which has been rebuilt with a Xeon E3-1220 v2, 8GB of RAM and an SSD. I also added in some Noctua fans to keep the noise down below a whisper as the rebuild meant it won’t be working hard as the whole install is now “bare metal” rather than the complexitiy of being virtualised.
Has it made a huge difference to my life? No. I still have a working router/firewall however it is now a decent GUI rather than an app that had to be levered onto my laptop (I’m also now a Mac boi) and to be honest the OpenVPN implementation has been a breeze to get working as has all of the firewalling and NAt rules as well as pushing on with trying to squeeze more from the LAN itself (10Gb backbone and tolerance).
I’ve gone for pfSense+ as it’s my home firewall and I qualify as such for the + usage FOC (for now) and I’m pretty happy with it. Time will tell but currently I don’t see me folding back to ESXi with a CHR running on top.
Install day was today and I’ve finally gone to FTTP. Installation was an absolute breeze, I’d put in a draw cord to get the fibre into the house and the Openreach engineer even took down the copper as well so nice and tidy. I have a neat little ONT in my house next to the living room patch ports and we are running a CHR with Gb internet.
Before install from a wired in connection during a working day.Following install but before ONT upgradeAfter ONT upgrade and a PPP drop and reconnect, this was Steam downloading a game on my CHR.
As you can see, the move wasn’t flawless, following the upgrade, my download speed held at the 55Mb I was profiled at previously but following an ONT firmware upgrade and then a PPP disconnect and reconnect from the CHR, we released the full power. My laptop couldn’t even manage to get the throughput due to the USB dock for a speedtest so a Steam download on the main gaming/editing PC was in order to show it off.
OK so the first attempt didn’t go to plan. BTOR were under a lot of strain last week due to adverse weather. We’re reappointed for tomorrow so fingers crossed the fibre gets lit up this time.
You must be logged in to post a comment.