Re: A FreeBSD-based Router

Other than talking about the appropriate hardware for the task at hand, I find it rather odd that no one has yet mentioned either the pfSense or OPNsense distributions. They’re both router-oriented, FreeBSD-based, web-administered, text-based-managed, and, above all, extremely versatile.

Mind you, I’m not talking to any degree against rolling out raw FreeBSD plus packages plus some orchestration solution to manage changes, I absolutely love that approach. But if what you want is a turn-key, ready-made solution to provide router-related functionality to your home network, then either of those two more than fit the bill.

I’ve been running pfSense here at home for the last… what, 6 years already? And it’s been rock solid! And on that router I run a DCHP server, DHCP6, radvd, unbound, HAProxy with a few ACME certificates, OpenVPN, a whole bunch of VLANs, plus of course pf with a bunch of rules for each of those VLANs, and probably other things I might be forgetting.

Furthermore, that pfSense router runs in a VM, sitting atop a Supermicro MOBO & a not super powerful Intel CPU, leveraging PCI passthrough for three NICs, and sometimes I just get bored at having almost nothing to worry about because it just works 24/7/365 without skipping a bit.

Again, other than discussing what would be the appropriate hardware for your setup, an appliance-like solution like that is definitely what I’d recommend.

HTH!

> On Apr 5, 2025, at 2:47 PM, Polarian <polarian@polarian.dev> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
>> There are ARM based SBCs (smaller than a mini PC) purposely built
>> as routers ie. with multiple ethernet ports. Since FreeBSD can run
>> on ARM (in theory), I would look into those. Very low power :-)
> 
> There is a limited number of supported ARM boards. [1] provides a list
> of them, but this page has not been updated in years so I am not too
> sure about the status of it, maybe ask the arm mailing list if you are
> interested in an ARM router?
> 
> If you are willing to take some additional energy usage for modularity
> picking up old desktops such as optiplex's can provide you something
> which can be upgraded very easily. SFF Optiplex's despite being small
> (not as small as some of the arm options) can fit 1 or 2 network cards
> in it, which can have up to 4-6 ports on a single card giving you more
> than enough ports to make as many subnets as you like. Old desktops
> tend to be cheap on ebay too, along with order gigabit network cards,
> and the more beefy cpu gives you more than enough compute headroom for
> anything you can think of. It does come at a power cost though, which
> in the long run could be experience.
> 
> You could also look at protectli [2] which provide minipc sized
> routers, however these come at a big cost, and will only save a small
> amount of energy using newer more efficient chips than old desktops,
> but they do pack a punch. I am not sure how well they support FreeBSD
> however.
> 
> At the end of the day, you need to decide on how much performance you
> need. If you only need a few hundred mbps of throughput then a
> raspberry pi 4 with a usb NIC can provide you that performance for a
> very low power draw, and reasonable cost. If you want something
> performance which can do gigabit (or more in the future) then old
> desktops or protectli boards might be the better way to go.
> 
> Take care,
> -- 
> Polarian
> GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760
> Jabber/XMPP: polarian@icebound.dev
> 
> [1] https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/arm/
> [2] https://eu.protectli.com/
>