Hi,
I'm planning to setup a router and firewall based
on debian for my home lab.
I know there are better (I mean, easier...) choices for this type of machine (have tried some of them, currently using pfsense) but I do want to find out if I could use debian.
The problem is my ISP uses pppoe for my symmetric
1 gbps connection and I know this type of connection requires a
quite performant cpu, as it is single-threaded and uses only one
cpu core. I'm currently using a supermicro motherboard with a
(four core) N3710 and setting up ipfire, pfsense, opnsense or
similar to use all my bandwidth is a real pain (if even
possible...)
I've been looking for reports on pppoe performance in debian on similar hardware but have found none (most people seem to be using freebsd-based firewalls these days), so my questions are:
Does anyone here have any experience using debian as of router and firewall on such hardware as mine using pppoe?
Is there any way debian could use the four cores
of my cpu to handle pppoe traffic? Or any other way to improve
pppoe performance...
And finally, I am planning on using shorewall for the firewall. I have been looking at the docs but have found no examples for a 4 nic machine. I guess that's possible, isn't it?
Cheers!