Recommended Posts

I have been looking at firewalls to purchase to mess around with. I had a monowall but that computer died. I don't want to spend a lot of money, but I want something that is going to let me VPN and open ports. I don't want to use a home router just simply because..

I have found a Fortinet 50B for around $150, these where made in 2007.. I am not sure if it would be a good idea to buy a firewall that doesn't get firmware updates anymore..

I am leaning more towards this one,

http://www.amazon.com/ZyXEL-Internet-Security-Firewall-Dual-WAN/dp/B0042WCFI2/ref=pd_cp_e_0

Not real sure with that brand but it has a lot of good reviews.. However, you have to buy the VPN client software to VPN in.

I have also looked a bunch of different Sonicwalls but I heard do not buy a used one because if it has been registered before on mysonicwall you won't be able to use it

I am also considering this one,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122380

If I had to buy one, I would go with the Fortinet but I don't know if it good to buy a older firewall..

Feel free to add any suggestions..

  • 5 months later...

Running it as VM has loads of advantages, one less equipment - means less power consumption as well ;) Two since I run development code of pfsense, I just take a snapshot before I do an update if something doesn't work in the update or fails, click back to my stable setup. This advantage would be there if not running development as well for when you update, but I update every few days to a couple of weeks whenever I see a new snapshot from pfsense that makes sense to go too or its been a few weeks. Currently there is issue with renewing your IPv6 address, so been updating every few days hoping for a fix, etc. It is not renewing, so you have to turn it off and grab a new one - which changes the PD your getting, so annoying when your IP range keeps changing, etc.

Three - since its VM, I can swap out any firewall distro I want very quickly never having to touch a wire. And if I setup the same mac on the different VM, I don't even have to reboot my modem, and maintain my public IP as the same, etc. So I can try out smoothwall if I want, untangle, or m0nowall, etc. etc. Or drop back to stable 2.0.2 version of pfsense if need to test something for someone, etc.

Unless your setup required too much horse power at your router/gateway for VM to make sense I don't think I will ever go back to a dedicated box for my gateway.

Running it as VM has loads of advantages, one less equipment - means less power consumption as well ;) Two since I run development code of pfsense, I just take a snapshot before I do an update if something doesn't work in the update or fails, click back to my stable setup. This advantage would be there if not running development as well for when you update, but I update every few days to a couple of weeks whenever I see a new snapshot from pfsense that makes sense to go too or its been a few weeks. Currently there is issue with renewing your IPv6 address, so been updating every few days hoping for a fix, etc. It is not renewing, so you have to turn it off and grab a new one - which changes the PD your getting, so annoying when your IP range keeps changing, etc.

Three - since its VM, I can swap out any firewall distro I want very quickly never having to touch a wire. And if I setup the same mac on the different VM, I don't even have to reboot my modem, and maintain my public IP as the same, etc. So I can try out smoothwall if I want, untangle, or m0nowall, etc. etc. Or drop back to stable 2.0.2 version of pfsense if need to test something for someone, etc.

Unless your setup required too much horse power at your router/gateway for VM to make sense I don't think I will ever go back to a dedicated box for my gateway.

yeah, I had it running on a VM and I loved it, but I had to get rid of my ESXi host for my house.. too Loud.. lol I need to get a rack and put it my basement

My pfsense, my file server vm my linux play box this runs 24/7/365 and then all my other play vms when I need to play with something, 2k8 box, 2k12, centos, win7 boxes, win8 vm, ntop I can fire up if want to look at traffic, freebsd, etc. etc.. Couple different copies of pfsense.

Its got 8 gb of ram - which is enough to run a few vms at once. I found out later you can bump up to 16 even though specs list 8 as max - which I might do at some point, its got 4 nics in it currently. With 4 drives, the 250GB it came with as datastore for the vms, and then 3 other disks a 2TB and 2 x 750GB for my file server - which I gave raw access to the vm and get like 50 to 70MBps file transfer off of. More than enough to play my media off of etc..

I could add 2 more disk if need be, just not in the bays. And its got esata so could add a 7th, and then usb so you could add more drives that way if you needed too. I got it on sale for like $269, plus the extra memory and nics -- you just can not beat it for a home esxi setup.

post-14624-0-40520200-1366596360.jpg

I think the new model is the N54L - same box really, I show it currently at newegg for $339

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859107921

Which is not a bad price..

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • I'm not unblocking my camera for this crapola. Sorry, Google.
    • Ummmm that is what is it supposed to do. Just turn if off in settings if you do not want it analyzing your open tabs. Chrome does the same thing with Gemini. Sarfari will do the samething after Apple's AI and even more so with the release of their 27 versions that is now powered by Googles LLM/ML models. Understanding why it is doing it and how it can help you vs jumping to some conspiracy theroy is a much better approach. As long as it can be turned off, all is good. Yes the default should be off but the a lot of people would never discover these features.
    • Just another reason (aside from many others) not to use Edge. Firefox 153.0b5 DEx64 has a similar feature added recently in prior builds that I will turn off at some point when I get around to it. It's the new "Something looks suspicious" page that pops up here and there. It cleverly hides itself between web pages that I've actually visited; as a result, you know, of selecting a web page and telling the browser where to go. The interesting thing is that it does not produce these warnings from pages that I, as the only intelligent user of the browser in my system, have ever directed the browser to open! What seems to be happening is that the browser looks at all the goofy ad links on a web page I do actually open and selects one that "looks suspicious" and then creates the "something looks suspicious" web page, which is neatly inserted, as mentioned, between web pages my RB ("real brain") has directed the browser to load in a session. The thing is, I usually look at links I am considering to follow before I ask the browser to load them, and in cases I have noticed where the link does indeed look suspicious, most of the time I will choose to not follow the link at all. Doesn't everyone do this or something similar? I am picky about what I voluntarily load... (I don't like links that start off fine, with a site designaiton that seems normal enough but then is followed by indecipherable alphanumeric strings many, many lines long, etc. I tend to reject those because they look suspicious. They may not be, but I don't care... I'll stay with Firefox, of course, if for no other reason than they usually let you turn off the junk you don't like. And because it isn't Edge... But at some point Microsoft will come to realize that putting your bookmarks on the left side is a Good Thing for a lot of people, just as Microsoft discovered when it had the bright idea of nailing the Windows taskbar to the bottom of the screen, when for decades Microsoft browsers had left that placement up to the user. They have finally reversed the obscenity of that decision. Finally.
    • Google was using the old CATPCHAs data to train their LLMs. What is the say they won't use this camera data of users to train their LLM? these companies need some strict regulations!
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Year In
      BA the Curmudgeon earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Conversation Starter
      rosiecharles earned a badge
      Conversation Starter
    • First Post
      KMilenkoski1202 earned a badge
      First Post
    • First Post
      carols23 earned a badge
      First Post
    • One Month Later
      Tom Willson earned a badge
      One Month Later
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      513
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      259
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      151
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      94
    5. 5
      macoman
      66
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!