Building a pfSense box

[XaveT]

Good afternoon!

I'm thinking about building a pfSense box for my home network.

I want it to be:

• 
  - As energy efficient as possible
  - Support full duplex gigabit internet side
  - Support up to 32 devices regularly (lets say 1K connections per device, 32,768 connections at a time)
  - Have as close to 0 latency as possible (duh, I know)
  - Remain viable (as a router/firewall) for a minimum of 10 years (4 regular router replacement cycles for me)

My budget is negotiable, but I don't want to spend an arm and a leg. How much do you think I need to spend to meet my requirements?

Any recommendations on components?

Anyone done this before and have any guiding advice?

Should I incorporate a wireless interface on the pfSense as well or leave that as an access point?

Any and all constructive comments are appreciated!

(I realize this is a VERY broad question.)

 

[bill001g]

Find any motherboard that has dual gig ethernet and is cheap. Unless you do something like content filtering a firewall could likely run a old machine you find at the swap meet. Maybe a couple gigs of memory but it takes very little.

It greatly depends what you do. Simple filters and NAT will do little. Lots of SSLVPN session takes massive cpu power.

In many cases you can buy a small commercial firewall for what you will pay for a small PC. When you are taking high performance devices commercial firewalls always will out perform a pc. This is because the CPU and other specialized chips have extra instructions sets designed to accelerate functions like encryption done by firewall. Sorta why you use a video card rather than the built in graphic on intel chips when you need performance.