pf and SMP and busy wires

Hello,

I like pf very much and I was planning to use it as a
"central" firewall at one
of the customers like this:

                      subnet_3
                         |
                         |
subnet_1 ---------- PF_firewall --------------- subnet_2
                         |
                         |
                    internet_gw

However, since these are subnets with many computers, these
would be gigabit
connections. But, I am afraid that this machine would not be
able to process
data with gigabit speeds. So my questions are:

1. Are there any real-life performance evaluations with PF
as firewall(s)
    (doing also NAT if possible)?

2. How efficiently does PF use SMP (FreeBSD 7.0)?

3. How much would I profit if I had a server with two
Dual-Core Intel processors?
    This means 4 cores, right? I guess this should be able
to process data with
    gigabit speed in the situation above?

4. How would PF scale if there were 5 or more such subnets
instead of 3 (with
    gigabit speeds)?

5. Are there any PF vs Cisco|Juniper|3Com layer3 switches
comparisons?

6. What role does the network cards play when looking at
performance? Are there
    network cards which do more work by themselves to let
CPU to do other things?

Thanks.
Nejc
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