PfSense and Alternatives: What Router Firewall Software to Choose.

Links to things mentioned:

Thanks for all your support! These are affiliate links so they do provide some support to the channel, so I can more videos!

[Invid]

Running a Qotom Q330G4 (i3 4th gen with AES-NI encryption acceleration) on Opnsense. Ran it for the first 3 years on pfsense and switched over to opnsense this year. I very much prefer the UI of opnsense. Wireless and managed switch are provided by Unifi and the controller runs on my OMV NAS in a docker container.

[vacecchin]

OpenWrt on x64 hardware. It's Linux, free and open source, very well supported and maintained. Also, it's simple and do the job. If you need more functionality, you can install packages through opkg.

[hrdavis]

I have a Qotom bare metal with SFP+ and 2.5G ports loaded with pfSense that works great for the home. I also have another Qotom (2.5G ports only) in my homelab that I loaded Proxmox to and have opnSense running as a Virtual Machine, it works great as well.

[JohnTaylorFPV]

I had issues with stability on opnsense and pfsense at 1st on my similar box. turns out there was a microcode update that needed to be done. i landed on pfsense because that's what i happened to be running when i found and applied that update. It's been an extremely solid option for me since and i use the tailscale plugin for vpn to my netowrk. PFsense is setup in a VM through proxmox with two of the ethernet ports directly accessed by the pfsense vm. i like doing it this way for the backups proxmox provides which has saved me before.

[jbuccaran]

Lijep hrvatski nogometni dres =) I think Pfesense or Opnsense are the the most robust options to install on x86 platforms you are starting out as they are probably the most well documented. Tons of options under $150 USD for N100 multi 2.5g NIC mini PC's- Even less if you only need gigabit.

[Pabula]

Imo Pfsense and Opensense are solid router/firewall software, that for the vast majority are not needed, i find more appealing Ubiquit offering, while limited and not as powerful, their integration with unifi, having their switch, accespoints among other things, makes it an ecosystem that imo offers more to the average user.

[drreality]

I think that we’re stuck with bsd if open source is a must!
Unifi and mikrotik are both Linux inside, the latter can be installed on any machine but you’d need a license!
Both have appealing hardware offering

[piscikeeper]

Had a Qotom with quad lan ports and J1900 running Smoothwall for about 6 years before it died. Switched up to an HP T730 earlier this year running pfsense. Biggest issue with Smoothwall was the lack of wireless support.

[mrfantasticindian]

Vyos runs faster than both the sense pf/opn cli is a pain initially but not big deal once u get the hang on it they have docs for most basic configurations

[SandWraith]

Does that mini pc have a N5105 cpu? If so, could you please make a BIOS dump of it and send it to me? Long story short, I have the same mini pc and flashed an updated BIOS (without making a backup first) and suddenly the SATA port just stopped working. Whatever BIOS a flashed afterwards, the SATA port never worked ever since and I cannot find the original BIOS it was flashed on anywhere. Thanks in advance ❤

[delias]

There are x86 builds of both openwrt and dd-wrt. Fine in a VM, but I found configuring for bare metal install a pita

[krillAmorim]

What about Endian Firewall? Can you try it?

[iverlaek]

You forgot to mention routeros. Another option is installing proxmox and virtualise opnsense of pfsense. Also works perfect. Also don't forget OpenWrt and similar software.

[RobertoMurillo]

I have a Debian Linux VM running on Proxmox as a Router/Firewall with Shorewall Firewall, ISC DHCP Server and Unbound DNS, and I can say it´s running great without any problems because I have it well configured even though I know Shorewall Firewall has lacks of upgrades since 2020-09-19.

[htubyfrdfcybrjdf]

Lopez Frank Moore Steven Williams Betty

[Mustafa-vzuo]

Get pfsense device instead of firewalla it will come with pfsense+ free lifetime

[ChristopherJackson-tr]

Gonzalez Joseph Lewis Frank Perez Karen