2023 Firewall Features Compared: pfsense | Arista | UniFi | Sophos | Fortinet | Meraki & What We Use

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⏱️ Time Stamps ⏱️
00:00 Firewall Comparison Chart
00:48 How We Made The List
02:15 pfsense CE VS pfsense plus
03:02 What About OPNsense
04:28 The Chart of Firewalls, pfsense, Arista Untangle, UniFI, Fortigate, Sophos, Meraki
06:20 Virtualization support
06:51 Central Management
08:17 Web Management Interfaces
08:51 License Fees
10:36 High Availability
10:56 BGP/OSPF
11:37 SDWAN
11:54 OpenVPN, Wireguard, L2TP, & IPSEC Support
14:38 Tailscale
15:15 IDS/IPS Traffic Inspection
16:31 Web Content Filtering DPI & SSL Inspection
17:24 DNS Filtering
18:21 Traffic Shaping
18:40 Multi WAN
19:22 Active Directory Integration
19:44 Policy Routing
20:20 Firewall Rules Based on Active Directory
20:50 Reverse Proxy & Let's Encrypt
22:52 Captive Portal
23:20 Traffic Reporting
24:00 VLAN Support

#firewall #networking #security

[LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

A few notes:
The Fortinet DOES have a reverse proxy (not just load balancer)
The Sophos DOES support Let's Encrypt for their web interface.

[connorfreebairn]

Really appreciate the run down. Comparing firewalls is hard at the best of times, happy you made this video. (The sheet could be a very useful resource in the future) 👍

[DPCTechnology]

Great stuff! would love this to be an annual thing. Great reference!

[aimestereo]

Thanks pal, great help on this topic!

[lumarel]

I was kind of a long time user of pfsense, and still use it for old testing environments, but at one point I got a Mikrotik Router, that has served me very well for any needed advanced firewall configurations, as well as VPN endpoints.

[ronniez]

Thanks for the video Tom, just a quick correction though, you might want to rename the 'Operating System' row to 'Kernel'.

Keep up the great work, I enjoy your videos a lot!

[stevenmishos]

4 minutes of disclaimers so Tom doesn't have to deal with, "why not xyz?"
... will still be asked, "why not xyz?".

[pest]

I was using pfsense for 5+ years and recently started having issues with rule schedules not blocking what I need to.
Switched to opnsense and was amazed - issues are gone and I live in 2023 now, not in 2000 pfsense web UI stuck into. Very happy with it and would say it is worth trying

[nicoribeiro]

Most wanted video for quite some time. Thanks Lawrence

[davidyoder]

I've been using Untangle since it was a Windows app (yes, you read that correctly), and I absolutely love it. No product is without it's downfalls, but Untangle has been rock solid for me for at least 10 years. One of my production edge devices running Untangle is about 70 days away from 3yrs of uptime!

[zparihar]

Great video Tom! I would add 2 things to the list:
1. API
2. OPENVPN With LDAP/AD integration (and bonus of the have 2FA
3. VxLAN

The reason I moved over to OPNsense from pfSense was because of API support for firewall rule and network automation and VxLAN. VxLAN support is definitely more nuanced, but I'm getting more involved in hyperconverged virtualization.

Yes, I don't like how often OPNsense updates either...

[MoD_Master_Of_Disaster_]

Long term Meraki user here, I even have 4 years and 299 days left on my licenses, but recently I moved to Pfsense. Main reason for ditching the Meraki MX64 firewall is that we've outgrown it. Being limited at 250Mbit on the WAN side is a 50% reduction of my internet speed (the ISP does give use a "free" speed increase every year or so). After having tested Pfsense as a VM on a Synology DS1621+ for a week, I bought the Netgate box. So last Friday I received my Netgate 6100 (with 4 years hardware support contract). Man am I blown away by it. Yes Meraki has some nifty features, though I don't think I'll miss them that much on our home network. Im quite certain the Netgate box will serve us well for the next few years.

[samadams]

Technically, Meraki does have the vMX, which you can run virtualized. However, most people tend to use the Meraki hardware. The vMX is mostly for Cloud environments.

[thetrevster]

The Fortigate does have WAF/reverse proxy. You can turn the feature toggle on for it to display the options in the GUI to configure it.

[segdesc]

It's missing Cisco Firepower (FTD), the new version 7.3 has some really neat features like EVE (Encrypted Visibility Engine), which allows the device to watch for malware within encrypted traffic without the need to decrypt it.

[zeroibis]

The firewall rule based on AD would actually be a great future feature for pfSense. Hopefully it is something we will see down the road.

[engrpiman]

My employer has always purchased meraki direct though CDW / Insight so I don't know if they are going awound MSPs. The license seems to also be a support agreement as they have replaced dead APs with newer models a few times.

[eXdriver]

I have a question about PFSense and Unifi. I took your advice from watching you video's and ordered a Netgate 4100 Max and I want to order some Unifi switch, access points and cameras. I want to also order a Dream Machine SE to make it easier to control the cameras for home use. Would you recommend using a Dream Machine with PFSense or would you recommend using a different solution to control and capture video for my cameras?

[antinstant]

What's your thoughts on the extra advanced threat/malware detections feature that some firewalls are preaching? Is there something similar to pfsense?

[bsem]

Great video. I would like some more info how you configure customer pfsense to vpn back to you and coordinate them all in regards to centralized management.