pppoe performance on debian and debian as router / firewall

[Antonio]

Hi,

I'm planning to setup a router and firewall based on debian for my home 
lab.

I know there are better (I mean, easier...) choices for this type of 
machine (have tried some of them, currently using pfsense) but I do want 
to find out if I could use debian.

The problem is my ISP uses pppoe for my symmetric 1 gbps connection and 
I know this type of connection requires a quite performant cpu, as it is 
single-threaded and uses only one cpu core. I'm currently using a 
supermicro motherboard with a (four core) N3710 and setting up ipfire, 
pfsense, opnsense or similar to use all my bandwidth is a real pain (if 
even possible...)

I've been looking for reports on pppoe performance in debian on similar 
hardware but have found none (most people seem to be using freebsd-based 
firewalls these days), so my questions are:

Does anyone here have any experience using debian as of router and 
firewall on such hardware as mine using pppoe?

Is there any way debian could use the four cores of my cpu to handle 
pppoe traffic? Or any other way to improve pppoe performance...

And finally, I am planning on using shorewall for the firewall. I have 
been looking at the docs but have found no examples for a 4 nic machine. 
I guess that's possible, isn't it?


Cheers!