Joe User Posted August 6, 2018 Share Posted August 6, 2018 (edited) Hi everyone, My network is getting to the point where I'm about to outgrow my consumer level router/AP. I'm looking to get something a little more powerful and wanted opinions. I'm currently looking at some routers from Ubiquiti, but I'm not quite sure which one would be best. (USG vs Edgerouter). My other option is to spin up a VM on my discount Hyper-V Server and run Sophos or PFSense and dedicate some network cards to it. But honestly, I like the stand-alone box idea better. Since I'm currently running an Asus router, I was hoping for something with a similar feature set. DHCP, Firewall, VPN server, DNS, etc... WiFI isn't needed, I have 2 AP's already. Any advice? What are your favorite routers? Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindovermaster Moderator Posted August 6, 2018 Moderator Share Posted August 6, 2018 Everyone here likes Ubiquiti. I mean, BudMan loves those things. Wait for him to get on, he can tell you a whole story about what he has... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe User Posted August 6, 2018 Author Share Posted August 6, 2018 18 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said: Everyone here likes Ubiquiti. I mean, BudMan loves those things. Wait for him to get on, he can tell you a whole story about what he has... That's exactly what I was hoping to hear! I've been out of the networking game for a few years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted August 6, 2018 MVC Share Posted August 6, 2018 I love their APs.. I did get a USG to hold me off until my pfsense hardware got here (back ordered at the time). For the price point the USG could handle my 500/50 without issue as long as didn't turn off hardware offload. Then it was in in the dirt. Here is what I will say - for the pricepoint is routes and has some neat eye candy with their DPI... But to be honest mine is sitting on my shelf.. Once my pfsense hardware got here (sg-4860 desktop).. It just couldn't even come close in features and ease of use.. If you want I will give you a good price on my USG.. Used for like a month.. How much umph your VM host have? You for sure could run pfsense on that, my problem was my OLD N40L couldn't do the 500 down.. It petered out at about 120ish.. So I had a choice either get a newer VM host (esxi for me) that could handle my new speed.. Or go hardware for router and just get a nas to replace my aging vm box. I went with the synology ds918+ and it can run my vms I still neeed/want to play with. And my router is hardware again.. Which is really nice to be honest - I miss the lack of worry on playing with pfsense snapshots because could just rollback the vm.. At some point I can tell you that at price point they are nice boxes the USG and they will get there with features and config... And if your unifi for switch/ap then might be good road to go down. But as of now the feature set and interface to manage and use the router and the feature set is just not there yet with unifi compared to pfsense.. I could ship you my USG for say $75 plus shipping.. Do you have a budget? The SG3100 would prob scream for you, I went a bit bigger because I like the router interfaces vs the switch ports and well I could budget wise Now kind of sucks didn't wait for the new SG7100 If you have the money I would go with that!!! That is screaming box... And they have some newer stuff coming as well I do believe. And they have the minnowboard option now https://store.netgate.com/MBT-2220-system.aspx Which is bit more budget friendly But for SURE go with their AP... Those are the BOMB!!! And very good price points.. I have a AC Pro, Lite and LR... I would love to get one of the SHDs to play with... But its hard to justify that price to the budget committee (wife) Now if say my Pro model caught fire or something So I had a legit reason to replace it heheheh But the Nano-HD is seems reasonable.. Prob go that route if in market for another AP.. Joe User 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe User Posted August 6, 2018 Author Share Posted August 6, 2018 I've got a Lenovo TS140 with a Core I3 and 16GB. Mostly unused atm. Also have some spare Intel Pro 1000 c server ethernet cards, so i should be able to handle the traffic. I'll give pfsense a shot. If it doesn't work out, I'll revisit the USG. Any opinion on the edgerouter series? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted August 6, 2018 MVC Share Posted August 6, 2018 LIke the edgerouter-x or lite? Or full blown? At $329 for the 8 port.. Do you have need of that many interfaces? Do you have a place to rack it? Again the management and feature set does not compare to pfsense - the only thing they really have any sort of advantage on is their simple turn it on dpi in the usg. But you can really do the same sort of thing in pfsense with the new layer 7 filtering and or ntopng package.. To be honest firewall rules and nats are PITA to be honest with unifi. You an not even do any sort of alias for rules... Once you play with pfsense you will be spoiled for life to be honest If you need to push a lot of packets for lowest possible cost then yeah the unifi routers can do that for sure.. If I recall correctly the edgeos was ported from Vyatta, and while it has some good stuff.. Its not really easy for new users or easy to ramp up on for easy config. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe User Posted August 7, 2018 Author Share Posted August 7, 2018 20 hours ago, BudMan said: LIke the edgerouter-x or lite? Or full blown? At $329 for the 8 port.. Do you have need of that many interfaces? Do you have a place to rack it? Again the management and feature set does not compare to pfsense - the only thing they really have any sort of advantage on is their simple turn it on dpi in the usg. But you can really do the same sort of thing in pfsense with the new layer 7 filtering and or ntopng package.. To be honest firewall rules and nats are PITA to be honest with unifi. You an not even do any sort of alias for rules... Once you play with pfsense you will be spoiled for life to be honest If you need to push a lot of packets for lowest possible cost then yeah the unifi routers can do that for sure.. If I recall correctly the edgeos was ported from Vyatta, and while it has some good stuff.. Its not really easy for new users or easy to ramp up on for easy config. Ok, I think I'm going to try pfsense and see how it works for me. Thank you so much for your help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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