Seeking advice for home router/firewall/switch

[stiell]

I'm looking for a router/switch/firewall for a new apartment setup and can't seem to find anything that will work. Here are the bare minimum needs:

• 6 gigabit switch ports
• SPI firewall
• DDoS protection
• DHCP Server
• IPSec Connections
• Highly reliable - it will live in a metal box in the garage, 3 flights down from my flat.

For some reason, this doesn't seem like rocket science, but there don't seem to be any descent options out there. Here are the roads I've traveled:

• Cisco RV082 - Doesn't do gigabit
• Cisco RVS4000 - Only has 4 ports
• Netgear FVS318G - Seems to be uber slow and unreliable

I'm open to trying anything that comes highly recommended. I'd like to spend less than $300. Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Jason C]

6 Gigabit ports on a router/firewall with some proish features for under 300 I think you're asking for way too much. Most places are which need a cheap router wouldn't need that many ports, or at least that many to be gigabit.

It might help if you let us know what your application was. Do you really need to be routing between all 6 ports and are all of the interfaces that it's connecting to gigabit? (seems like a weird setup since Gigabit WAN connections are pretty rare.)

You might want to see if you can do the job with a router with fewer ports and a switch. if you need to have several separate subnets you could probably use a router with less ports and a Netgear GS108T *web managed switch to set up a VLANs if you need to separate traffic Especially if you get a router that you can use .q tagging with

If you need a router I know a few people who swear by MikroTik they aren't glamourous and certainly won't add the work of expensive industrial case designers to your wiring room, but they are extremely configurable and apparently very reliable. You also really need to understand networking to set one up it's all command line etc.

They basically sell you a barebones board with a their router OS then if you want one you can buy a case for them.

This one here us a 9 gigabit port naked board http://routerboard.com/index.php?showProduct=107 (the RB493G version is $200) and you get a usb port and 3 mini PCI slots. They even have an out door case for it.

 

[stiell]

Thanks, Jason. Good points. And to your point, no, they don't all need to be gigabit, but 3-4 of them do. Does that change your thoughts at all?

 

[Jason C]

You still haven't said exactly what you want to achieve I'd say take a look at these netgears.

How many WAN Ports do you need?

There's a bunch of new netgears out in your price range with gig ports.

I hadn't even seen this one http://www.netgear.com/business/products/security/wired-VPN-firewalls/FVS336G.aspx but it's got 8 LAN and 2 WAN ports, plus all the VPN and Stateful stuff you want. I would certainly be less configurable than the mikrotek but you'd have a much better chance of actually securing your network with it if you aren't a total master of routing and firewall rules.