@jasonh said:

If you have an old PC laying around (or find one on kijiji for < $50), put two network cards in it and install pfSense. If you're concerned about power consumption, find a Pentium 3; they draw very little power. If space is an issue and you don't mind spending a few $ (< $200), get an Alix board/case/power supply.

I gave up on consumer routers a while ago. I found mine would choke every time someone started doing a portscan or other weird hacking/scanning attempts on the cable network. I still use a D-Link wireless router for my Wifi access, but it's running openwrt and it's just a bridge between the WLAN and LAN (WAN port is not in use)

Note, I had the "choking" issue on my D-Link and Linksys routers even while they were running openwrt; I think the small CPU's in them just couldn't handle dropping all the packets and while continuing to serve legitimate traffic

My Cisco E3000 running dd-wrt has yet to go down in almost 4 days. Before, it was every 4 hours with my network. No exaggeration. When you host your own website out of the location too, that's really bad. But I know what you mean. The OEM firmware sucks on almost all consumer stuff. Netgear Genie is the best of the lot that I've seen but still pales in comparison to dd-wrt, which I swear by.

@JaredBusch VPN speeds are in latency terms. OpenSSL produces a bit more latency than IPsec does.

Welcome to the party!

@thecreativeone91 said:

Untangle is a major resource hog from what I remember.

It is. It isn't routing or switching software, it's just Linux as a full OS with tons of apps running on it. So unlike, say, Vyatta which powers the Ubiquiti which is based on Linux but is extremely light and fast because it is a custom kernel with a custom network stack just for routing, Untangle is the full blow OS with nothing special. So you need tons of horsepower to handle normal routing tasks effectively.

Meraki is free and because it installs onto the Windows boxes (and Macs) it doesn't do the network scan. So it is massively easier to manage, more reliable and more secure because you can leave your ports closed.

@scottalanmiller said:

@JaredBusch said:

Wonder how much of a difference really. There are rumors of a Ubiquiti phone, so that may be a reason for the PoE only models. Aside from powering their APs.

Like a SIP desk phone?

Yes. Rumors only, but seeing them more lately.

Not any time in the near future. For smaller environments, it may be an option, but present CPUs and busses don't have the horsepower to handle a heavy workload like ASICs currently can. 10 years from now, perhaps.

@Bill-Kindle said:

very interesting. My only concern is with continuous development, will they keep the product / service updated if it goes live?

It's google. So not likely.

Now I'm going to have "Don't copy that floppy" stuck in my head.

@Bill-Kindle said:

@Mike-Ralston It's a router / firewall that you can install on pretty much any old computer with two NIC's.

The one thing you have to worry about for hardware requirements is the supported network cards. It will RUN on anything but you may not be able to use it if your network cards are not supported.

Check out: https://www.pfsense.org/hardware/index.html#compatibility

@Chamele0n said:

@Bill-Kindle said:

@Dashrender Asus routers are by far the easiest I have ever setup. Almost pull out of box and plug in easy.

I love the newer ASUS line, it has DD-WRT by default for firmware. It has added features compared to most manufacturer firmware. But it's not too hard to configure. Should be fairly easy for non-techies to understand. I probably won't go back to Linksys since Cisco no longer owns it.

I don't think Cisco owning Linksys added any value. Hurt it actually.

The Asua line with DD-WRT was a brilliant move on Asus' part. If you want DD-WRT which a lot of people do, why go anywhere else? I need to get one for testing soon. Probably the best way to go for home routers.

@slazer2au said in Does VTP update the Description of vlans?:

@Duffney
It takes the vlan database of the server switch with the highest revision and sends it to every other switch in the VTP domain.

Be careful though, VTP is a double edge sword.

As are VLANs themselves! 🙂

Tags added.

@scottalanmiller said:

I assume that there is no means of using DA with Macs, for example?

Not at present. You can, however, use the same RAS servers for VPN. Perhaps if/when Macs gain more traction in the mainstream business market, we'll see that shift.