On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 5:38 PM, Adam Van Ornum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I appreciate the ideas (even the car discussion is interesting ;) but I'm > basically looking for something that will cover pretty decent throughput > with as low energy usage as possible. Currently I'm on a cable connection > at ~8Mbps downstream so it won't take too much to cover that, and based on > the options where I live I doubt anything significantly faster will be > available for quite a while, so the dual P3 system is overkill. The system > is a 1U rackmount unit so its also very limited in terms of options for > replacing power supplies, etc, and as Dave mentioned, it would still be at > least several times higher energy usage than something like an Alix. Plus, > the noise of that rackmount box is driving me crazy! :)
Yep, that's the idea. You should be able to find an old PII or AMD K6-II around 500MHz with a couple PCI slots for NICs for next to nothing. The power draw of those systems is fairly low (make sure you have a good 80Plus PSU) - they should idle around 30-35w. The cost is right, and you get to reuse something that would very likely be discarded. Something like an ALIX system would even be better if you could find one second-hand - but then consider you can get one for as cheap as $163 (Look at a ALIX 2C0 kit - they can push about 50 Mbps without much trouble - down the road when pfSense gets based on FreeBSD 7, hopefully that will go higher ;-). As long as you plan on keeping/using it for as long as possible, with such a small/light system the energy/environment costs of a new system are much less than your typical PC. -Dave
