@Dashrender said:

@Brains said:

@Dashrender The IT Director does not want additional complexity (solid windows environment) and my staff is not Linux trained so there is a knowledge gap that would exist. Unfortunately I cant really do anything about that and I do not have time to be the main tech support whenever something breaks with the system. I have to work within the system I have. It looks like we are going to settle with the LRT224 due to cost concerns.... Thanks for your help though, I would much rather go with the Peplink ONE, but the $300 ($600 since we like to have a backup) price difference is enough to make a difference at this time.

I just don't understand why they are being so cheap on the hardware? Seriously, it's worth putting your company at risk, or have lower performance on your 200 Mb pipe over a few hundred lowesy dollars? If that's true, why not save some bucks and lower that internet pipe to 100 Mb or even lower?

preaching to the choir brother. Preaching to the choir.

@Jason said:

@travisdh1 said:

@Brains said:

@scottalanmiller Isn't it both? We wouldn't want to buy a server license for it, so Linux would be my only option

pfSense is BSD. VyOS is normally what's recommended if you want to do routing on pc hardware. I'm still getting to know how to work it myself.

VyOS is great if you know Cisco IOS commands, sounds like they would rather manage things with a GUI though.

Its been a while since I used to program Catalyst routers for Orlando Telco, but they would rather follow the KISS method whenever and wherever possible. I have a lot of green staff.

@JaredBusch said:

Buy an ERL and pay me to set it up. You will come in under $1000 unless you cannot give clear requirements (which I highly expect to be the case).

Ive got plenty of clear requirements, I'm very good at my job (and there aren't too many requirements). The PepLink covers all of our requirements very nicely. I was looking at the EdgeRouter Lite (and I already upgraded us to Unifi WiFi recently), how are Ubiquiti's Routers? The APs have seemed to work pretty well but the range is a little lower than our previous ones. I still need to fine tune of course.

@Dashrender said:

@Brains said:

@Dashrender The IT Director does not want additional complexity (solid windows environment) and my staff is not Linux trained so there is a knowledge gap that would exist. Unfortunately I cant really do anything about that and I do not have time to be the main tech support whenever something breaks with the system. I have to work within the system I have. It looks like we are going to settle with the LRT224 due to cost concerns.... Thanks for your help though, I would much rather go with the Peplink ONE, but the $300 ($600 since we like to have a backup) price difference is enough to make a difference at this time.

I just don't understand why they are being so cheap on the hardware? Seriously, it's worth putting your company at risk, or have lower performance on your 200 Mb pipe over a few hundred lowesy dollars? If that's true, why not save some bucks and lower that internet pipe to 100 Mb or even lower?

It's just bad timing and we are in the healthcare market and subject to Texas's Workers Compensation craziness, so its been a rough year or two for us. They are watching all the pennies. But GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! I was able to find a Peplink CORE ONE on amazon for $399!!! So I was able to make the argument and get them approved. Ill be ordering them today or tomorrow.

I love this community btw, thanks a lot for the help. If anyone will be at Lone Star PHP in Texas this weekend, let me know. Ill be there and will buy you a beer.

@travisdh1 ahh ok sorry I thought Scott meant its windows and Unix based. I assumed it was Linux, but I guess its BSD. I haven't had any hands on experience with BSD, and while there may be a shot at getting some Linux in our environment for an upgrade to NGINX and Apache, I don't think I could swing BSD in addition to it.

@scottalanmiller Isn't it both? We wouldn't want to buy a server license for it, so Linux would be my only option

@Dashrender The IT Director does not want additional complexity (solid windows environment) and my staff is not Linux trained so there is a knowledge gap that would exist. Unfortunately I cant really do anything about that and I do not have time to be the main tech support whenever something breaks with the system. I have to work within the system I have. It looks like we are going to settle with the LRT224 due to cost concerns.... Thanks for your help though, I would much rather go with the Peplink ONE, but the $300 ($600 since we like to have a backup) price difference is enough to make a difference at this time.

@PSX_Defector One more question. Do you know what the limit is for maximum port forwarding entries on the BPL-ONE? We are currently capped at 30.

EDIT - I called their support (GO CDT TIMEZONE COMPANIES!!). Tech support was VERY helpful and said there were no restrictions.

@scottalanmiller yea I would much rather spin up a Linux install and run pfsense/openVPN or something similar. Unfortunately that is not an option for me.

@PSX_Defector Thanks for your help! I appreciate it

@PSX_Defector said:

@Brains said:

@PSX_Defector I am admittedly not the most knowledgeable when it comes to VPN. We would prefer for Windows to handle the connection to the VPN without additional software and configurations. What would you recommend?

@PSX_Defector said:

The other part to keep in mind is the bandwidth limits on these things. I found out the hard way my Peplink had a 20Mbps cap on how much data could flow through it. After I got an RV082, I hit the ~50Mbps limit on that one, then the RV042's 100Mbps limit. I had to go up to using a Mikrotik to support the large ass circuits I was getting from AT&T and TWC.

20Mbps cap??? Really? Wow. We would like one that can handle our new 200/15 Mbps connection.

Well, it was a Peplink 300, which is very very old and one of their first devices. It was replaced with the 310, which supports ~350Mbps.

http://www.peplink.com/products/balance/model-comparison/

You could go with a ONE or 310. The 310 supports more fun stuff, although I would seriously consider picking up a 305.

For your VPN client, I'm guessing you are using RRAS on Windows or have in the past. PPTP is the protocol used by RRAS and Peplink's VPN daemon. So if you are using it now, it's pretty easy to implement. Keep in mind PPTP is pretty weak security wise, you might want to still get an OpenVPN service behind the firewall to make a more secure method of connection.

we really don't have too many VPN users, just IT Staff and the marketing director. Occasionally other users, but not often. So adopting a new protocol is not very difficult for us. I would like your best recommendation for configuration so that I can research it and integrate that into my report.

The Peplink 305s were over $1500 each from the distributors we called. Have you found them cheaper?

@PSX_Defector I am admittedly not the most knowledgeable when it comes to VPN. We would prefer for Windows to handle the connection to the VPN without additional software and configurations. What would you recommend?

@PSX_Defector said:

The other part to keep in mind is the bandwidth limits on these things. I found out the hard way my Peplink had a 20Mbps cap on how much data could flow through it. After I got an RV082, I hit the ~50Mbps limit on that one, then the RV042's 100Mbps limit. I had to go up to using a Mikrotik to support the large ass circuits I was getting from AT&T and TWC.

20Mbps cap??? Really? Wow. We would like one that can handle our new 200/15 Mbps connection.

@RojoLoco Thanks for the correction. I have always just referred to it as Prosumer, but if SOHO is the correct term, I will start using that. Thanks!

Hey everyone! I am having a horrible time trying to find a good device with the above qualifications for under 1k. Does anyone have any recommendations or should I just go back to a software VPN server?

We do have quite a few port forwards setup, our current RV082 is maxed out at 30 (I think), so this may be a deciding factor as well.

We have seen some peplink (availability scarce) and mushroom networks (seems good but I don't have any first hand experience) devices that seem like they will work. What are your thoughts? Thanks for the help!

EDIT: Thanks for the questions, here are the answers.

• We don't need site-to-site VPN, only client VPN.
• We would like to not have to use a 3rd part software client. We would prefer to use built-in windows connection

@Dashrender Yea its really crazy. Its because the HDD wrote date above the 137GB mark which it could not address

Oh I have a good one. This ingrained the practice of asking one simple question "What has changed recently?" and the practice of reevaluating the situation to avoid going "Down the rabbit hole"

This was many years ago. I was working as an on-site IT Tech going to various homes & businesses throughout the day. I arrived on-site and fixed their issues. As a good measure I went ahead and updated and cleaned temps . Lo and behold, the computer booted to a black screen with blinking cursor. I did EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING to attempt to repair the boot. Bootsector repair, chkdsk /r , + various other fixes. I was still green in some ways and did not stop and step back to reevaluate the situation. I spent 2-3 hours attempting to fix the boot on this lady's laptop with no success. Eventually I figured it out. The Hard Drive had been upgraded recently to a 320GB. Unfortunately, the laptop only had 28 / 32 bit LBA (forget which one is applicable) and the previous tech had installed this large drive without paying attention to this limitation. So once the windows update wrote data above the 137GB mark, the drive was not bootable. I partitioned the drive into 120GB partitions and defragged and voila! It started booting again

@dafyre Unfortunately there is only 1 SATA Controller on the Tyan boards. The other board has its own onboard controller that could be used, but the LSI is wired to the backplane that the HDDs are slid into, so I would have to do some rewiring. Which is possible, but I will need to figure out how to fix this problem either way.

Thanks for help everyone, Im hoping I can get it figured out. I am seriously considering some kind of issue with Server 2012R2 and this type of configuration. Does anyone else have this configuration or could mock it up to see if you experience the same problems?

@DustinB3403 Thanks Dustin. I will take a look. I will check to see if that service is running after I log into Windows after the long boot.

@Dashrender It is hanging on the Windows Loading screen (Circling dots). After ~45 minutes it will get to the login screen (updated original description)

@DustinB3403 said:

Start the system (and a stop watch) and stop it when the system is running. All while monitoring the Server service.

So after the server has booted up (~45 minutes) you want me to see if the service "Server" is running? And you want me to do the same thing with the drive disconnected? I am not sure what that will accomplish. I am pretty sure it is running immediately after boot (It is running now on all 3 servers), but will not be able to do that until next weekend.