Speed Tests with VPN and Encryptions. Help by Sharing your results :)

[Rango]

Yeah it uses then what specs show. Idle 68W and @load 151W/h = $100/year at avr load of 100W

http://powersupplycalculator.net/

 

[L&LD]

Yeah it uses then what specs show. Idle 68W and @load 151W/h = $100/year at avr load of 100W

http://powersupplycalculator.net/

View attachment 5713

At the same site, I get 48W idle and 117W max load. As stated, you will never reach max load on this system for any appreciable length of time. (I didn't include the gpu, don't need it for your use, plus I substituted an ssd instead of a hdd). I also changed it to 24 hours per day and the recommended power supply is 173W (very close to the 180W power supply I mentioned before).

Average load is for a desktop workstation scenario. For pfsense usage? I would be surprised if it reached half of the max load indicated in this configuration.

 

[Nullity]

...
Average load is for a desktop workstation scenario. For pfsense usage? I would be surprised if it reached half of the max load indicated in this configuration.

Here's a 6 month log on my pfSense PC with my whopping 12Mbit/768Kbit connection.

 

[Rango]

LLD you're not adding dual nic card for this which bumps to 53W at idle but if you disable gpu wouldn't pfsense not boot up at all. It needs some gpu right.
Problem is this pc had desecnt gpu card probably in mobo. 53w idle means pc is doing nothing.
I subracted hd and add ssd and subtracted gpu but not sure pfsense will boot.

I will have some load on cpu at all times due to openvpn encryption decryption so lets say 25% load. That would put it at 70W/hr or plus i would think.

 

[Rango]

Null you are obviously not running openvpn with encryption lol.

 

[Nullity]

Null you are obviously not running openvpn with encryption lol.

Very true, but my point was that the thing is idle pretty much 24/7. If you get an AES accelerated CPU, even the low power atom CPUs in the pfSense official hardware can push ~1000Mbit.

How much bandwidth are you expecting to use?

 

[Rango]

Very true, but my point was that the thing is idle pretty much 24/7. If you get an AES accelerated CPU, even the low power atom CPUs in the pfSense official hardware can push ~1000Mbit.

How much bandwidth are you expecting to use?

All i need for now is 100Mbps with AES-256. My point is regular pc with openvpn runing and encryption will probably yield $100/year electric bill on top of your other pc. Pfsense can't sleep. pc can. So maybe best solution is to go with one of those atoms which uses like 15w peak form what i'm reading. it will cost $380 up front but at least platform is better and over 5 years it pays for itself or back to router simply. All i'm saying on pc pfsense cost $100/year which i didn't realize until i read some more. Kinda sucks. $400 up front or back to router i see as options.

 

[L&LD]

LLD you're not adding dual nic card for this which bumps to 53W at idle but if you disable gpu wouldn't pfsense not boot up at all. It needs some gpu right.
Problem is this pc had desecnt gpu card probably in mobo. 53w idle means pc is doing nothing.
I subracted hd and add ssd and subtracted gpu but not sure pfsense will boot.

I will have some load on cpu at all times due to openvpn encryption decryption so lets say 25% load. That would put it at 70W/hr or plus i would think.

Adding the dual nic card only adds 2W to the totals I gave (48W idle, 119W max load and 176W suggested power supply running 24/7/365).

I don't add the gpu because that processor has an igpu (as already stated) that supports up to 2 displays by itself.

http://ark.intel.com/products/43546/Intel-Core-i5-650-Processor-4M-Cache-3_20-GHz


Even at 50W idle, using dedicated circuitry like Intel AES new instructions wouldn't move that too much past idle power usage. Maybe SEM could comment on that?

The benefit of dedicated circuitry (AES, SSE 4.2, etc.) is not only is it many times faster than doing the calculations in the main processor, it is also much more efficient too.

 

[Rango]

Adding the dual nic card only adds 2W to the totals I gave (48W idle, 119W max load and 176W suggested power supply running 24/7/365).

I don't add the gpu because that processor has an igpu (as already stated) that supports up to 2 displays by itself.

http://ark.intel.com/products/43546/Intel-Core-i5-650-Processor-4M-Cache-3_20-GHz


Even at 50W idle, using dedicated circuitry like Intel AES new instructions wouldn't move that too much past idle power usage. Maybe SEM could comment on that?

The benefit of dedicated circuitry (AES, SSE 4.2, etc.) is not only is it many times faster than doing the calculations in the main processor, it is also much more efficient too.

50-60w would be ok with me but i suspect we're talking about best case scenario which won't happen and most likely will be that 100w but i hope you're right. That pc has 240W PSU.
Swapping PSU and SSD will add cost and might as well build atom one.
I mean openvpn, snort etc all this will add some weight especially openvpn. In that case i woudn't mind but $100 @ 100W make no sense.
I'm assuming gpu chip could be disable in bios then. I'm usually wrong so LLD i hope you're right lol

System your thoughts?

 

[L&LD]

50-60w would be ok with me but i suspect we're talking about best case scenario which won't happen and most likely will be that 100w but i hope you're right.
I mean openvpn, snort etc all this will add some weight especially openvpn. In that case i woudn't mind but $100 @ 100W make no sense.
I'm assuming gpu chip could be disable in bios then. I'm usually wrong so LLD i hope you're right lol

System your thoughts?

With that website indicating 119W at full cpu load, I can't see it consuming 100W at the loads pfsense and the other software will require with the included hardware accelerated circuits that will leverage the efficiency to a very high degree?

In other words, the $55 (E8400) option will 'save' only 4W per hour at idle, but with any load be working closer to the maximum (indicated) 109W because of no hardware accelerated circuitry.

The $145 (i3 2100) option will be even worse (better idle, worse at full loads) because it is the most powerful processor (without the AES pfsense needs).

(And before I forget again, the ram is 1x module for that website. Not 4x as you're indicating (it is the number of modules, not the amount of the ram).

That Supermicro C2558 Rangeley you posted may be the best for pure efficiency (about 32W for a running system), but I somehow doubt the performance it offers is anywhere close or offers as much 'bang for the buck' either.

https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...c2750-benchmarks-supermicro-a1sai-2750f.2444/

That $200 extra could be powering your system for a few years and allowing you to save money for a real high efficiency and powerful pfsense solution while you're learning too.

 

[Blade Runner]

Rango,

No way a modern PC will use the amount of electricity those websites are calculating. People overestimate the cost of operating a PC. There is this common belief that it costs hundreds of dollars per month to operate a full-time server and hard drives spinning down will make a difference in an utility bill.

Incorrect.

A headless PC operating 24/7 should cost about $2-4 per month. If someone is doing something wild and crazy, it should cost about $8-9 per month.

Rackmount devices and using 30 amp circuits for support is a different story. Anyone using these devices in the home means there is a legitimate need and prepared for the operating costs.

Cost of electricity depends more on external factors like where does one live than a PC. For example, the cost of A/C will exceed the cost of a PC. A meaningful cost model that incorporates a variable like A/C is impossible to construct because one’s environment determines electricity consumption. It’s something that one cannot control and precludes direct comparisons.

pfSense operates as a router and firewall. It doesn’t trigger blackouts. It doesn’t travel between dimensions. It doesn’t generate a cone of silence.

This thread has been hijacked enough.

Please start a new thread.

 

[System Error Message]

if you're so worried about power use than get a good 80+ platinum PSU, a micro ATX board with no more than the features you need and only plug in what you need. I also suggest that you plug in a wattmeter and see for yourself.

I have a PC that isnt considered power efficient but it uses the same power as a light bulb and idles for less power. Ofcourse gaming uses more power. A TDP is the maximum amount of power it would use but not the amount of power used in a scenario. I could run furmark on the GPU and get readings of close to the TDP but run a synthetic graphics benchmark and only see 2/3 of TDP even though GPU usage is full.

I would say that many embedded routers are less power efficient than desktops mainly because there is no difference in power use between idle and fully loaded. You can also undervolt your desktop or even phone but a router that used the same CPU as your phone a few years ago cant be undervolted and uses more power than your phone all the time. When i say less power efficient i mean for the work/benefit you get from it.

In the latest intel architecture apparently the names have changed a little bit but you want the main iseries architecture (not the cut down/power efficient ones) if you were going with intel. Reason is the less cycles they use to perform a task the less power they use. In modern architectures an idle CPU cycle doesnt consume power however in the small SoCs some designers tend to disregard that feature and the board itself doesnt cut power to unused components. AMD would have their own equivalents though as with pfsense you dont need a fast CPU, only a good architecture and NIC to run it well. Newer intel server NICs use less power than older ones assuming they use a smaller manufacturing process.

if you are even more fanatic about power use, have only 1 stage of converting AC to DC power. Apparently USB ports use power and converting between either AC/DC does have some power loss. One of the reasons for embedded is because you can than just have a 12V PSU with the PSU not having to do 5V or 3V making things more efficient and easier if you want to use batteries. Dont forget to swap all your lights to LED.

Also from the youtube video you showed the PC was overclocked with less power efficient GPUs and it was overvolted too. Overvolting with overclocking significantly increases power use from 50% to 100% more.

Typical desktop usage uses between 100-150W whereas idle can go all the way down to 20W for desktops. Laptops power usages are even lower. My desktop with its 2 seperate GPUs and nothing overclocked idles at 40W although i would say 60W now with the additional drives and cards. Fans do use power too so having only 2 fans and perhaps a fanless PSU would reduce power use.

Also i ran a GTX 580 externally once and hooked it to a wattmeter. It read 150W during benchmarks and gaming whereas the TDP was 250W. The watt meter was reading the PSU, GPU and PCIe adapter. Without a monitor idle went down to a few watts.

 

[sfx2000]

in the very early days if you arent virtualising pfsense than it claimed to need a pentium 3 to get decent speeds without using other features. I guess a pentium 4 would be able to get gigabit speeds with intel NICs without using other features. So a dual core i3 or even core2 would do very well even with features. AMD CPUs also will do well as long as you dont use the realtek NICs that come with them. Many who use intel server NICs wth pfsense have gotten gigabit speeds with only a few % CPU usage of an i3, not sure about ATOMs.

Anything before Nehalem is likely going to be discounted - the power draw/performance is generally not good compared to what we see these days... this includes all P3's/P4's/Core2's/etc...

Even within Intel arch, one can see some benefits based on the CPU core and features enabled - any Celeron based on IvyBridge is going to give decent performance, and some of the Silvermont/Airmont cores do very good AES numbers - again, depends on the platform (Baytrail-T/CR has AES-NI, Baytrail M/D don't) - Intel seems to have fixed this with their recent Airmont cores (Braswell/Cherry Trail) by keeping this feature in...

Oddly enough - the little ARM's - Cortex-A7 and later, can do very well with dedicated blocks, but the landscape is a bit fragmented as this is an optional feature within the ARM ecosystem...

 

[sfx2000]

I think you can login to your AsusWRT device and run "openssl speed aes-128-cbc aes-256-cbc bf-cbc" to get benchmark results direct from OpenSSL. My RT-N66U prints the following text:

The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type             16 bytes     64 bytes    256 bytes   1024 bytes   8192 bytes
blowfish cbc     13166.85k    13933.81k    14690.60k    14558.70k    14635.60k
aes-128 cbc      12327.56k    13300.38k    13847.73k    14002.52k    13961.90k
aes-256 cbc       9499.30k    10100.46k    10388.62k    10411.03k    10367.82k

I dunno if the results are useful...

Just for fun...

The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.

type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes

blowfish cbc 100599.51k 105649.04k 107772.31k 107998.40k 107968.84k

aes-128 cbc 150050.07k 154938.21k 157007.31k 158943.84k 157951.79k

aes-256 cbc 116650.34k 119890.80k 121043.51k 120208.78k 121359.93k

 

[BeachBum]

I just upgraded my homes firewall/router to a SuperMicro pfsense box (see specs in sig).

ASUS AC3200 alone:
34.2/13.36 megabit/second

pfSense 2.3/ Supermicro A1SRi-2758F:
123.6/20.07 megabit/second

This is running AES-128-cbc

*I should add the max connection here is 200Mbps and I did this from a machine connected via 5ghz wifi to an AC3200 in AP mode.

 

[CiscoX]

Test from AC88U

The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
blowfish cbc 36613.50k 42332.40k 43811.62k 44533.97k 44214.66k
aes-128 cbc 44472.31k 48945.25k 50721.93k 51148.12k 51731.91k
aes-256 cbc 33812.21k 36613.60k 37746.35k 38350.17k 37896.19k