Fitlet2 for PfSense!!

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Jimbo
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Nov 10, 2018 2:54 am

Re: Fitlet2 for PfSense!!

Post by Jimbo »

I've used various Fit-PC and Fitlet equipment for pfSense over the years and generally, been really happy. Currently using an RM 4LAN Fitlet (previous version) with 8Gb RAM and a 256Gb SSD for various routing, firewalling, IDS/IPS (Snort), VPN, caching (Squid) and so forth. Its idling most of the time.

For your use case, you would have quite low CPU requirements and any of the options would do fine, personally, I use the E3950s for the Fitlet2s that I have. 4 to 8Gb RAM and a small (64Gb should suffice) SSD depending on what you want to do - Snort/Suricata, Squid and such things will require more RAM and storage.

Don't use pfSense as an application server, that would be dangerous.

As for the WiFi adapter and using it with pfSense as an Acess Point, I've set this up before and run with it but I would say "yes you can, no you can't and its generally more trouble than it is worth". The WiFi card that ships with the Fitlet (an Intel from memory) is unlikely to work well, if at all, with the FreeSBD base of pfSense (WiFi support is patchy). You would need to remove the Intel card and source your own Atheros based card. These can be found realtively cheaply on-line, but finding one that works "just right" can be a struggle. I never found the cards to remain very stable either often requiring a restart of pfSense.

My recommendation, if you are wanting to use pfSense and have an Access Point that isn't a consumer grade thing, is to buy a dedicated standalone Access Point. I use Ubiquiti Unifi (ubnt.com) APs myself and would recommend them.

Lastly and importantly, I've read that FreeBSD has some problems with the Apollo Lake CPUs and that you might need to make some configuration changes to get pfSense to boot on the Fitlet 2. If you search for "pfSense apollo lake" you should find the issue and its "fixes".

Don't know if that helps you, but there you go.

James

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