Pfsense highend Asus router

[Chrismallia]

Hi have a question wich I am a little puzzled on, I am building a network and was wondering if pfsense wich is great but is it really worth near these high end Asus example router? like with asus router you now get ai protection that protects against http and https (in pfsense havp only scans http), adaptive qos, open vpn and dual core processors over 1ghz Is there really big advantages in running a pc over these routers? thanks and regards

 

[L&LD]

Depends on the network you are building.

Details would be great.

 

[System Error Message]

The difference is obvious, price, performance, features,security pfsense wins as a router. As for wifi and sharing ASUS wins. For the unskilled pfsense is going to be difficult and you cant use it as a nas or print and scan server.

While you can find small form factors like some intel NUC form factors with 2 NICs and wifi the wifi isnt as good compared to a high end consumer wifi router. recent intel CPUs have low power variants that only consume 2x the amount an ARM based router consumes but gives many many times more performance. If you want to saturate gigabit internet without hardware acceleration than going with x86 will let you do it but those high end routers that use ARM will only achieve up to 500Mb/s without hardware acceleration and still cant fully saturate a symmetric 1Gb/s internet with it.

If you are a business or non consumer than go with pfsense and you can use ASUS for wifi.

 

[Chrismallia]

Hi thank you for replies I am doing this for a small community 200 members and may be growing, but also was looking into pfsense or asus for my home, I use pfsense and have no problems in configuring and so on, as for features I want it to protect the networks from virus threats and so on, as for wifi it is no problem as we have xclaim xi3 AP (RUCKUS) and for sharing we have a dedicated server *I also have xi3 and server at home so these are not a issue) so the only thing that remains is as router/firewall. Than you again for you advice

 

[Nullity]

I imagine pfSense only scans HTTP because anti-virus scanning is non-functional on encrypted protocols (HTTPS). Other things like Snort can see how many bytes are sent per stream and therefore occasionally finger-print traffic, but it is not always reliable. My point is, I doubt aiprotection is doing anything useful by scanning https.

pfSense has a more powerful QoS feature-set, without a doubt.

pfSense on a desktop CPU will run OpenVPN 10x faster, at the least. A CPU with AES-NI is important.

 

[spopinski]

Pfsense + ubiquiti ap's + ups. That's what I did at my previous jab 4 years ago.
Still running strong for multiple servers and 50+ clients

With modern router it is simpler though

 

[sfx2000]

Considering pfSense on one of these...

2 core Intel® Atom™ C2358 CPU, 4GB memory, 8GB flash, and 4 GbE Ethernet Ports
Includes Intel QuickAssist Integrated Accelerator


http://store.netgate.com/ADI/RCC-VE-2440.aspx

$300USD...

 

[Chrismallia]

Considering pfSense on one of these...

2 core Intel® Atom™ C2358 CPU, 4GB memory, 8GB flash, and 4 GbE Ethernet Ports
Includes Intel QuickAssist Integrated Accelerator


http://store.netgate.com/ADI/RCC-VE-2440.aspx

$300USD...

look great, in some forums I read that to run squid havp and snort it is bestfor a I5 or E3 xeon and over 8gb ram, do you guys think thats too much for a firewall?

 

[Chrismallia]

As for routers you say with no hardware net you can not get gigabit internet, but is there a reason not to use hardware net? maybe qos and ai protection will turn off hardware net?

 

[System Error Message]

hardware NAT, meaning network address translation. How can you be using pfsense and not no this?.
Hardware NAT means using a chip to do the work, just like how a GPU does graphics in which software graphics from CPU is very slow.

An example of hardware acceleration is how MMX and AMD 3Dnow improved graphics and math related performance by the CPU compared to using standard x86 instructions.

while you should use hardware NAT currently it doesnt allow you to use QoS and firewall with it. It also depends on the router, some routers can accelerate packets with some other features while some cant.

 

[Chrismallia]

hardware NAT, meaning network address translation. How can you be using pfsense and not no this?.
Hardware NAT means using a chip to do the work, just like how a GPU does graphics in which software graphics from CPU is very slow.

An example of hardware acceleration is how MMX and AMD 3Dnow improved graphics and math related performance by the CPU compared to using standard x86 instructions.

while you should use hardware NAT currently it doesnt allow you to use QoS and firewall with it. It also depends on the router, some routers can accelerate packets with some other features while some cant.

Thanks for reply I know what hardware net is, sorry if I did not ask the question clearly what I ment that using qos on routers makes them disable hardware net right? just wanted to confirm that. sorry again if the question was miss understood

 

[System Error Message]

Thanks for reply I know what hardware net is, sorry if I did not ask the question clearly what I ment that using qos on routers makes them disable hardware net right? just wanted to confirm that. sorry again if the question was miss understood

NAT, not net.

On some routers yes it disables it, on some routers it doesnt. For example on mikrotik you can accelerate some packets and apply filters on the others. On mikrotik hardware NAT is enabled by creating the rules for them instead of a checkbox like for other routers.

 

[Chrismallia]

NAT, not net.

On some routers yes it disables it, on some routers it doesnt. For example on mikrotik you can accelerate some packets and apply filters on the others. On mikrotik hardware NAT is enabled by creating the rules for them instead of a checkbox like for other routers.

NAT, not net.

On some routers yes it disables it, on some routers it doesnt. For example on mikrotik you can accelerate some packets and apply filters on the others. On mikrotik hardware NAT is enabled by creating the rules for them instead of a checkbox like for other routers.

So you chouce will be pfsense in this situ

NAT, not net.

On some routers yes it disables it, on some routers it doesnt. For example on mikrotik you can accelerate some packets and apply filters on the others. On mikrotik hardware NAT is enabled by creating the rules for them instead of a checkbox like for other routers.

lol thanks for correcting my mistake . So if it where up to you would you go with pfsense? as I wrote I already have a server and xi3 AP

 

[System Error Message]

So you chouce will be pfsense in this situ

lol thanks for correcting my mistake . So if it where up to you would you go with pfsense? as I wrote I already have a server and xi3 AP

pfsense would be better.