Recommendations for a router for Infinity

gadgeteer

gadgeteer

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Hi all

I got fibre yesterday and the router from TalkTalk is shocking. I can't understand the firewall section of the router which is pretty dire since I'm supposed to be a firewall specialist! At one point it locked me out and i had to reset it. Speeds can also be variable.

I used my old Linksys and that's working fine except I've noticed the speed tops out at 35Mbps whereas when I plug my laptop directly into the BT Openreach modem I consistently get 50Mbps+.

So I'm after some recommendations for routers that can cope with > 35Mbps speed that doesn't cost the earth.

Thanks
 
Neil beat me to it :D You may want to look at dd-wrt on it too, although the stock Asus s/w looks pretty good (I only use mine as an access point)

Alternatively if you're a firewall specialist, an old PC (or newish Atom based board) with 2x ethernet sockets/cards running pfSense is where it's at.....
 
arad85 said:
Neil beat me to it :D You may want to look at dd-wrt on it too, although the stock Asus s/w looks pretty good (I only use mine as an access point)

Alternatively if you're a firewall specialist, an old PC (or newish Atom based board) with 2x ethernet sockets/cards running pfSense is where it's at.....
Click to expand...

LOL.....guess what I've been looking at for the last 30 mins....getting another NIC for my HP Homeserver and running a VM using either pfSense or Smoothwall
 
It runson freeBSD. Support for esoteric hardware isn't brilliant. Set the VM environment to use Intel NIC style devices and you should be OK.

Fundamentally the system picks up what it can.
 
arad85 said:
Alternatively if you're a firewall specialist, an old PC (or newish Atom based board) with 2x ethernet sockets/cards running pfSense is where it's at.....
Click to expand...

How about three ethernet adapters, for a proper DMZ as well? So internally segmented network with three firewalls, WAN <-> LAN, WAN <-> DMZ and DMZ <-> LAN?

When I last looked into this, mid range modem/routers seemed to just use their "DMZ" port as a dustbin to dump any incoming packets that aren't replies expected by stateful packet inspection, and don't firewall the DMZ from the rest of the LAN.
 
gadgeteer said:
...running a VM using either pfSense or Smoothwall
Click to expand...
+1 for Smoothwall, but it can be 'funny' to install in a VM as it seems to expect the CD or iso to be on a conventional ata channel.

Mike.
 
onomatopoeia said:
How about three ethernet adapters, for a proper DMZ as well? So internally segmented network with three firewalls, WAN <-> LAN, WAN <-> DMZ and DMZ <-> LAN?

When I last looked into this, mid range modem/routers seemed to just use their "DMZ" port as a dustbin to dump any incoming packets that aren't replies expected by stateful packet inspection, and don't firewall the DMZ from the rest of the LAN.
Click to expand...
Yup... Routers tend to DMZ to "the DMZ IP address". You can set pfSense up as you want - you just need to be able to describe what you want to do as firewall rules.
 
arad85 said:
Yup... Routers tend to DMZ to "the DMZ IP address". You can set pfSense up as you want - you just need to be able to describe what you want to do as firewall rules.
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Ta, will look into some appropriate hardware, if it can work out cheaper than buying a(nother) firebrick then I'll do that.
 
onomatopoeia said:
Ta, will look into some appropriate hardware, if it can work out cheaper than buying a(nother) firebrick then I'll do that.
Click to expand...
Mine is a VM on an ESXi server here. Just popped in an HP NC380T and use the two ports directly into the VM. Doesn't take up much CPU at all.
 
neil_g said:
Yup. Seemed to detect the adapter state going up and down but not the link.

Will have another play at some point but I'm still preferring the sophos utm. Deploying one over the next few weeks.
Click to expand...

I run Sophos UTM 9 as a VM on ESXi running on a HP Microserver, no issues with the added HP dual port nics whatsoever.
 
neil_g said:
got a UTM hardware appliance at the end of my work desk ready to be installed in the rack :D
Click to expand...

:cool: I'm led to believe that there's not much difference, if any, from a configuration point of view between running their hardware or running the software on your own kit. Not tried their kit to confirm that though.
It suits my needs at the moment at home anyway.
 
PaulF said:
:cool: I'm led to believe that there's not much difference, if any, from a configuration point of view between running their hardware or running the software on your own kit. Not tried their kit to confirm that though.
It suits my needs at the moment at home anyway.
Click to expand...
yeah we were going to look at running a VM, i think decision was it was replacing an existing hardware appliance. but yeah the tech advisors said it was no difference (other than you could tweek VM specs)
 
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