Help with a Router Distro?

[Tech9]

but by the time you've got gigabit traffic and want ids/ips

IDS/IPS with today's encrypted traffic doesn't do much. If you go network proxy way the things get ugly for some services. I still have Suricata running and pfBlocker, but trimmed down a lot. By the way, IDS/IPS is the first reason for family complaints, if not done properly. And it takes time to do it properly.

Probably, but it was pretty inexpensive

How inexpensive is Intel NUC 11 and in what configuration?

 

[GrumpyGent]

downside of untangle is it's more resource hungry in terms of cpu but an 11th gen nuc the cpu should be ample running it for a 900/40 internet connection - and there's no denying it's got the most 'friendly' UI.

The $150/yr is the tier most people really need ( the $50/yr tier lacks threat prevention, wireguard & ipsec vpns, virus blocking ) - it sounds a lot but if you want zenarmor on opnsense ( which is probably the closest rival in terms of a 'friendly' tps ) then that's $100/yr by itself

I'm OK paying something like that (I'm not necessarily looking for free, and happy to support a product I use - particularly for something as important as my internet connection)

 

[Tech9]

Untangle offers 14-day free trial. You can test it and see if it works for you.

 

[Trip]

@GrumpyGent - For something with a decent GUI and CAKE support via SQM package, I'd suggest OpenWRT. Luci is a fairly easy GUI once you get used to it, and there's a decent amount of how-to material on YouTube and elsewhere at this point. For something commercially supported that's even easier to admin and has CAKE already baked in (no pun intended), check out Untangle SD-WAN router, with the unlimited throughput license ($238/year or $22/month). Lower-latency packet routing and slightly better de-bloating versus Untangle NG. And despite not actively advertising it, SD-WR can be installed baremetal just like NG. Untangle offers IPS/IDS on it as well. Perhaps worth a look.

 

[coxhaus]

So, what's the story with OpenWRT as I heard it is dead but LEDE has taken over? It looks like it has some good QoS.

 

[sfx2000]

So, what's the story with OpenWRT as I heard it is dead but LEDE has taken over? It looks like it has some good QoS.

The LEDE and OpenWRT teams resolved their differences and moved forward - OpenWRT is the survivor there, and the LEDE team and infrastructure is fully integrated...

 

[ddaenen1]

i am definitely not a subject matter expert, not on networking, not on OpenBSD nor on pfsense but i can share i found it way easier to set up pfsense than it was configuring the Ubiquity Edgerouter or the Mikrotik. There are loads of tutorial videos on youtube, pfsense has good wizards and documented material online. To me, still the best solution i ever had, even compared to the Linksys and ASUS routers that i once had.

I find the nice thing about pfsense is that it takes virtually no effort for the initial working setup and as you go, you learn how the other functions that you might need work. Also, it is rocksolid and performance, of course depending of your hardware, is excellent.