The Perfect Budget Router? Sub £200 1U Server from Aliexpress

In this video I take a look at a cheap 1U server from Aliexpress that looks like the perfect hardware to build a router.
NOTE ABOUT PFSENSE COMPATIBILITY:
Unfortunately the CPU in this device (and other similar devices on Aliexpress) does not support AES-NI instructions. Netgate (the creators of PFSense) have decided to make this a requirement of PFSense 2.5 which is due to be released in a couple of years. This means that this system won't be able to run PFSense 2.5. There are, however, many alternative operating systems that will run great on this hardware such as OPNSense, VyOS, Sophos UTM, IPFire, Untangle.etc or alternatively you could just run a bare OS. Personally I've stopped using PFSense and replaced it with bare FreeBSD using a combination of PF and dnsmasq to serve my needs. Hopefully in a couple of years time, CPUs supporting AES-NI will have started to find their way into devices like this (since these devices tend to use slightly older CPUs).

The particular model I have here has an Intel Celeron C1037U, 4gb of DDR3L RAM and a 64gb SSD. These machines are available in several configurations from various sellers.

Link to the specific device I purchased: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/HCiPC-B203-2-HCL-SC1037-6LA-SYSTEM-Celeron-C1037U-6LAN-1U-Firewall-System-6x82583V-LAN-Router/404571_32718127858.html?spm=2114.12010612.0.0.41a1b3611dNElo

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Видео The Perfect Budget Router? Sub £200 1U Server from Aliexpress канала Cameron Gray