OPNsense

Stephen Lecrenski

07 Feb 2026 — 2 min read

OPNsense

Router/WAF

It all starts with good networking

Solid networking is the silent backbone of a modern high-performance and general computing environments. It is the backbone of the internet.

True enterprise-grade networking provides three essential pillars:

Zero Bottlenecks: It ensures your internal 10Gbps transfers and external fiber speeds are never throttled by a weak CPU or saturated ports.
Granular Security: It allows you to isolate vulnerable IoT devices while keeping your primary development environments and financial nodes behind hardened, low-latency firewalls.
Predictable Stability: It eliminates the "mysterious lag" during video calls or large data pushes, providing a consistent experience regardless of how many concurrent sessions your network is handling.

In my environment I have deployed a sophisticated networking solution with complete control over the environment. The following is what I have deployed.

🚀 DEC2770: Enterprise-Grade Networking Power

The DEC2770 is a high-performance 1U rackmount appliance specifically engineered for OPNsense, delivering serious throughput and reliability for demanding networks.

⚡ Top-Tier Performance

10Gbps Firewall Throughput: Capable of handling massive traffic volumes at wire speed.
8.5Gbps Port-to-Port Throughput: Optimized for high-speed internal routing.
1.2Gbps IPsec VPN: Hardware-assisted encryption ensures secure, ultra-fast remote access.
1Gbps Threat Protection: Serious inline intrusion prevention without sacrificing speed.
Ultra-Low Latency: Average firewall latency of just 150µs.

🔌 Advanced Connectivity

2 x 10Gbps SFP+ Ports: High-speed fiber interfaces for your core network.
7 x 2.5GbE RJ45 Ports: Massive multi-gigabit density for all your wired devices.
Total Port Flexibility: Up to 9 high-speed physical interfaces to eliminate bottlenecks.

🧠 The Specs Under the Hood

CPU: AMD Ryzen™ Embedded Quad-Core (max 2.2Ghz) for robust multi-threaded processing.
Memory: 8GB DDR4 RAM to handle up to 7 million concurrent sessions.
Storage: 256GB Solid State Flash for extensive logging and reporting.
Efficiency: Powerful cooling design that maintains a typical power consumption of only 20W.

Home Configuration

In my environment I run this router/firewall/waf appliance as my core networking router. It assigns subnets for each network interface. Depending on my networking firewall rules I can have any subnet talk to another. I run 10Gbps ethernet to my k8s and ceph cluster. My modem has a 2Gbps uplink and downlink. So I have 2Gbps symmetrical internet. This enables me to handle an enormous amount of traffic both ingress and egress from my network.