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    pfSense vs OPNSense - Fanboy fued or real differences?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved IT Discussion
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    • DashrenderD
      Dashrender @scotth
      last edited by

      @scotth said in pfSense vs OPNSense - Fanboy fued or real differences?:

      @scottalanmiller I'm planning to retire an old spinning drive. That's all

      But if it means spending money - that money could possibly be used better somewhere else. That's basically what I was getting at.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • scottalanmillerS
        scottalanmiller @Dashrender
        last edited by

        @Dashrender said in pfSense vs OPNSense - Fanboy fued or real differences?:

        @scotth said in pfSense vs OPNSense - Fanboy fued or real differences?:

        @Dashrender said in pfSense vs OPNSense - Fanboy fued or real differences?:

        @black3dynamite said in pfSense vs OPNSense - Fanboy fued or real differences?:

        @Dashrender said in pfSense vs OPNSense - Fanboy fued or real differences?:

        @scotth said in pfSense vs OPNSense - Fanboy fued or real differences?:

        @Emad-R said in pfSense vs OPNSense - Fanboy fued or real differences?:

        @scotth

        They are both great, but when you want to scale you want them on hardware and not VM that will handicap your hypervisor.

        When you think about hardware and low power, there are alot of alterantives better than those 2 and cheaper, netgate provides PFsense but for 200$ ad the idea of desktop machine acting as router and using alot of power does not make sense to me.

        However pi3 or better makes perfect sense, but guess what neither PFsense or OPN runs on ARM

        https://store.netgate.com/MBT-2220-system.aspx

        After my lab, I'm planning to load it up on an HP Elite 8300 SFF i5 quad core with 8 GB RAM and an addin dual Intel NIC. It's what I'm running Sophos on now. I don't experience any issues with this setup.
        I picked it up for $100 during a desktop refresh.
        EDIT: I'm also planning retire my spinning drive.

        For home use - a desktop class machine is totally fine.
        Not sure an SSD will make any difference in the performance of the firewall though.

        SSD will help squid proxy cache.

        how useful is that in a home network?

        I'm hoping that it'll impede momma and kid from being blatantly foolish in their cruising activities.

        <<yes, I have attempted to share information about foolish behavior on the internet>>

        I'm lost - what does a squid proxy have to do with keeping the kids off the internet - other than possibly it's a webfilter as well as a caching proxy - my original question was about the benefit of SSD - to which the reply was squid proxy cache.. ok that make sense, but how is a proxy cache helpful for most home users - is there really a lot of overlap in a home to make this worth while?

        Squid's two main functions are a proxy to filter, or a cache. Since he is not using the cache, we assume it is for the filter.

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        • 3
          360col
          last edited by

          OPNSense user here. Its just more friendly. Tried Sophos XG and it killed my WAN speed even with most things disabled. I have used Sophos UTM in production for many year previously.

          I have a very old EdgeRouter sittign around. Wondering if I'll run the latest firmware. I didn't like it much back then so its been clotting dust.

          DashrenderD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • DashrenderD
            Dashrender @360col
            last edited by

            @360col said in pfSense vs OPNSense - Fanboy fued or real differences?:

            OPNSense user here. Its just more friendly. Tried Sophos XG and it killed my WAN speed even with most things disabled. I have used Sophos UTM in production for many year previously.

            I have a very old EdgeRouter sittign around. Wondering if I'll run the latest firmware. I didn't like it much back then so its been clotting dust.

            What didn't you like about it? FYI - it's not a UTM, so you can't look at it from that POV.
            As far as I know, all ER are still supported.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • scottalanmillerS
              scottalanmiller
              last edited by

              pfSense can be turned into a full UTM. Don't know about OPNSense.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 1
                1337
                last edited by 1337

                Pfsense have been around much longer and very likely have a significantly larger user base. So assuming there are no other differences that would be a big plus for pfsense, unless you want to be a beta tester or just play around.

                It's also easier to find guides and info on setup as well for pfsense. Pfsense also has packages (OPNsense don't) so you can add more functionality like squid, haproxy etc.

                I don't think there is much difference behind the scenes though when it comes to standard functions as both are running freebsd and using the PF packet filtering system from the openbsd project.

                We just use pfsense and call it a day. Don't have time to try every possible permutation of a firewall 🙂

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • S
                  scotth
                  last edited by

                  Sorry. Was at a site meeting a vendor for an installation. I'm catching up.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • scottalanmillerS
                    scottalanmiller
                    last edited by

                    pfSense's maturity and market presence definitely make a big difference. And they have that add-on UTM deal.

                    S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • S
                      scotth @scottalanmiller
                      last edited by

                      @scottalanmiller said in pfSense vs OPNSense - Fanboy fued or real differences?:

                      pfSense's maturity and market presence definitely make a big difference. And they have that add-on UTM deal.

                      I have both running in VMs and am exploring.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • black3dynamiteB
                        black3dynamite
                        last edited by

                        Squid is already part of OPNsense. Here a full list of plugins available.

                        Dynamic DNS Support
                        Let's Encrypt client
                        Get all peers connected to a local network
                        BIND domain name service
                        Apply a persistent 10 second boot delay
                        c-icap connects the web proxy with a virus scanner
                        Webserver cache
                        Antivirus engine for detecting malicious threats
                        Collect system and application performance metrics periodically
                        Debugging Tools
                        Flexible DNS proxy supportung DNSCrypt and DoH
                        RADIUS Authentication, Authorization and Accounting Server
                        The FRRouting Protocol Suite
                        Control ftp-proxy processes
                        Reliable, high performance TCP/HTTP load balancer
                        A sample framework application
                        IGMP-Proxy Service
                        IDS Proofpoint ET Pro ruleset (needs a valid subscription)
                        IDS PT Research ruleset (only for non-commercial use)
                        IDS Snort VRT ruleset (needs registration or subscription)
                        Connection speed tester
                        L2TP server based on MPD5
                        LCDProc for SDEC LCD devices
                        LLDP allows you to know exactly on which port is a server
                        Proxy multicast DNS between networks
                        Net-SNMP is a daemon for the SNMP protocol
                        Nginx HTTP server and reverse proxy
                        Prometheus exporter for machine metrics
                        Traffic Analysis and Flow Collection
                        Network UPS Tools
                        OpenConnect Client
                        SMTP mail relay
                        PPPoE server based on MPD5
                        PPTP server based on MPD5
                        End of life, superseded by FRR plugin
                        Redis DB
                        Relayd Load Balancer
                        RFC-2136 Support
                        Protect your network from spam
                        Secure socks5 proxy
                        Siproxd is a proxy daemon for the SIP protocol
                        SMART tools
                        End of life, superseded by Net-SNMP plugin
                        Agent for collecting metrics and data
                        The cicada theme - grey/orange
                        A suitably dark theme
                        The tukan theme - blue/white
                        Tinc VPN
                        The Onion Router
                        Universal Plug and Play Service
                        VMware tools
                        vnStat is a console-based network traffic monitor
                        Kerberos authentication module
                        Group and user ACL for the web proxy
                        Wake on LAN Service
                        Xen guest utilities
                        Enterprise-class open source distributed monitoring agent
                        Zabbix Proxy enables decentralized monitoring
                        Virtual Networks That Just Work
                        
                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                        • JaredBuschJ
                          JaredBusch
                          last edited by

                          FFS, so much stupid going all left, right, and center..

                          1. What are the WAN speeds involved.
                            1. Ubiquiti sells nice gear, but there are potential speed limits depending on router configuration.
                          2. UTM at home? WTF is the point of such a complicated setup.
                            1. There is no good free UTM anyway.
                          3. WTF are you doing for backups that is not already encrypted before going over the wire? You don't need a VPN for back ups.
                          4. You have an old Ubiquiti router but didn't say shit about the model. As mentioned it is a ROUTER, if you hated it because it didn't massage your dick, then that is your fault for not knowing WTF you bought.
                            1. There is not a single model of Ubiquiti router that cannot be upgraded to the current firmware.
                          5. Software routers are silly things that burn power and time.

                          So what should you do?

                          Depending on your WAN speed needs, buy a Ubiquiti or Mikrotik router that will handle the needed speeds. I personally recommend the Ubiquiti ER-X for "technical" home use first, then the Ubiquiti ER-4 if you need more speed with the QoS enabled.

                          For normal home use, I recommend the Ubiquiti Amplifi Instant Mesh System for $179.

                          Buy a RaspberryPi 3 kit with case and card for $50 someplace and install Pi-Hole. Setup your Router to send all DNS to the Pi-Hole.

                          Setup MeshCentral for remote support

                          Setup ZeroTier for any point to point "vpn style" needs you may have.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
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