Mercury II 1U Server pfSense Appliance

Mercury pfSense Appliance. 1Ghz VIA C7 1U Server. Four (4) x Ethernet (optional Intel Gigabit Ethernet). VIA Padlock Security Engine (or optional Soekris VPN1411 VPN Hardware Accelerator). Stateful inspection firewall. 50-200 users. Up to 500,000 concurrent connections. 15-77 Mbps IPSec VPN throughputs.

pfSense is an open-source firewall distribution based on FreeBSD.

Features

  1. Short-Depth 1U Rackmount Case. The form factor of the 1U server is about 17 inches by 8 inches by 1.7 inches in dimensions. Weight about 10 lbs.
  2. Low power-consumption: 15W without a hard drive.
  3. Fanless system. Designed to run from a compact flash or SSD. It is recommended a system fan if used with a 2.5inch SATA laptop hard drive.
  4. High network throughput:
    • 85 Mbps raw/cleartext (600 Mbps with Gigabit Ethernet option)
    • 34 Mbps Blowfish IPSec VPN
    • 55 Mbps AES-256 IPSec VPN (77 Mbps with Soekris VPN1411)
    • 15 Mbps 3DES IPSec VPN (77 Mbps with Soekris VPN1411)
  5. Two (2) PCMCIA sockets supporting  2x Sockets for Cardbus(Card-32) card and 16-bit card.
  6. Optional addition of four (4) Realtek RTL8100C 10/100 Ethernet for a total of eight (8) Ethernet NICs: four (4) Fast/Giabgit Ethernet built-in and four (4) Fast Ethernet using the PCI expansion.

Suggested Deployment

  1. Corporate Firewall or router/gateway for Small and Medium Business (SMB).
    • Load balacing with dual-Wan for enhanced Internet performance.
  2. VPN server for branch offices and main corporate headquarters:
    • Supporting IPSec, SSL-based OpenVPN, PPTP.
    • 34 Mbps Blowfish IPSec VPN throughput between pfSense/M0n0wall/IPCop VPN servers.
    • 55 Mbps AES-256 IPSec VPN or 15 Mbps 3DES IPSec VPN (77 Mbps with the optional Soekris VPN1411) with commercial Cisco/Checkpoint/Juniper VPN servers.
  3. Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and Intrusion Protection System (IPS).
    • With the addition of the Snort package. Recommended to be used only with the hard-drive or SSD-based pfSense appliance.
  4. Web filtering and content control.
    • With the addition of the Squidguard package. Recommended to be used only with the hard-drive or SSD-based pfSense appliance.
  5. Failover or Hardware Redundancy (CARP) (http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Configuring_pfSense_Hardware_Redundancy_(CARP)).
  6. The 1U rackmount Mercury pfSense Appliance is also an ideal hotspot solution to be deployed in a broadband-enabled environment such as hotels, coffee shops, school, campus, libraries, and conference facilities.

Support and Warranty

  1. One (1) year industry standard warranty. A single contact for both hardware and software issues.
  2. Depend on the maintenance options, we will walk you through the initial VPN server setup to configuration of multi-wan load balancing and failover.
Price: $649.99
$649.99
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SKU: RM1U PFCV763A4R10
Specifications
Performance* Mars Highlights
Suggested Users 50-200

Stateful Inspection Firewall enforces security policies and resists malicious attacks.

Easy configuration, security management and monitoring of network infrastructure.

Network Address Translation (NAT) protects and hides internal network information from the outside world.

VPN offers significant savings over leased connections between branches or remote offices.

Mulit-WAN load balancing optimizes usages of internet resources.

Failover provides reliable and un-interrupted internet connectivities.
Firewall Throughput 85Mbps
Concurrent Connections

 200,000
3DES IPSec Throughput 55Mbps
AES IPSec Throughput  15Mbps
BF-CBC OpenVPN Throughput  34Mbps
Hardware Specifications Mercury
Systemboard  CV763A
CPU  1Ghz VIA C7
Memory  1GB DDR2 RAM
Storage  2GB CF
Ethernet  4 x 10M/100M
(Optional Intel Gigabit Ethernet)
VPN Hardware Accelerator VIA Padlock
(Optional Soekris VPN1411)
Expansion

 - 1xPCI
 - 1xMini-PCI
 - 2xPCMCIA
Cooling  Fanless
Hardware Warranty  1-year limited
Support Contract Mercury
Standard Support  1-year

* Performance depends on network environment and configuration of the firewall.

Performance and Cost Comparison?

Since pfSense appliances have been used as firewalls and Internet routers, it is only fair to compare against Cisco products. We have chosen VPN performance to see how the 1Ghz VIA C7 stack up.

Router Mercury Cisco 2811 ASA 5510 ASA 5520
AES IPSec 55 Mbps1
77 Mbps1,2		 22 Mbps1
35 Mbps3		 66 Mbps1
170 Mbps3		 225 Mbps3
3DES IPSec 15 Mbps1
77 Mbps1,2		 22 Mbps1
35 Mbps3		 66 Mbps1
170 Mbps3		 225 Mbps3
Failover Supported Active/Standby5 - Active/Standby Active/Active Active/Standby Active/Active
CPU Speed 1Ghz VIA C7 350Mhz RM5261A 1.6Ghz Celeron 2.0Ghz Pentium-4
Power Consumption 15W unknown unknown unknown
Fanless System Yes No No No
Cost $650 $2,2794 $2,181 $4,295

Notes:

1As measured by iperf.
2With the optional Soekris VPN1411 VPN Hardware Accelerator
3As reported in Cisco Sales Literature and Documentation. (Cisco Router Performance data come from here.)
4Cisco router cost includes the IOS Security Bundle (SEC/K9) and are typical found on the Internet.

5Detail CARP configuration is discussed at http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Configuring_pfSense_Hardware_Redundancy_(CARP). Active-active configuration is not possible at this time.