"serious" small business router
This is a product niche that I'm not very familiar with what are the right options out there.
Tiny home networks or very small businesses will typically use their ISP's provided modem/router combo, or buy a consumer router like something you'd pick up from Best Buy. These are consumer devices, some of them might have "fancy" networking features, but they are not really made for business use.
Large businesses and datacenters will have enterprise-grade networking equipment - e.g. Cisco, Dell, HP security appliances / firewalls / routers that cost thousands of dollars and can do everything. They usually have service level agreements, have redundancy features built in, and require some sort of formal education to be able to do anything useful with them (e.g. CCNA), and are managed via a command-line interface.
What do you put in for "mid-size" businesses, e.g. 50-100 computers that have graduated from the cheap consumer stuff and need a "serious" router intended for business use, needs to be reliable and capable, but they are not yet at the point where they can justify spending the thousands of dollars on enterprise level stuff? E.g. The sort of router that would cost $300-600?
One client of mine had a Cisco SA500 Security Appliance, which was pretty neat but the product line doesn't appear to exist anymore.
So far the only thing I've found is the Sonicwall TZ100 and 200 series routers. What do you think of those?
Tiny home networks or very small businesses will typically use their ISP's provided modem/router combo, or buy a consumer router like something you'd pick up from Best Buy. These are consumer devices, some of them might have "fancy" networking features, but they are not really made for business use.
Large businesses and datacenters will have enterprise-grade networking equipment - e.g. Cisco, Dell, HP security appliances / firewalls / routers that cost thousands of dollars and can do everything. They usually have service level agreements, have redundancy features built in, and require some sort of formal education to be able to do anything useful with them (e.g. CCNA), and are managed via a command-line interface.
What do you put in for "mid-size" businesses, e.g. 50-100 computers that have graduated from the cheap consumer stuff and need a "serious" router intended for business use, needs to be reliable and capable, but they are not yet at the point where they can justify spending the thousands of dollars on enterprise level stuff? E.g. The sort of router that would cost $300-600?
One client of mine had a Cisco SA500 Security Appliance, which was pretty neat but the product line doesn't appear to exist anymore.
So far the only thing I've found is the Sonicwall TZ100 and 200 series routers. What do you think of those?
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OK if you're tech savvy and want to spend $300-600 then here is a solution for you, recycle a good used computer say one with a 2gig processor 4gig of ram and a 250gb hard disk, preferable SSD or you can buy one of those small headless computer very cheap, some come with wifi or you can buy wifi and put in it, load up one of these gateway appliance,
Untangle, VyOs, or PfSense.
spend time do the config and clone the system for future use, it will do all that you ask, the only cost is a computer and your time.
Untangle, VyOs, or PfSense.
spend time do the config and clone the system for future use, it will do all that you ask, the only cost is a computer and your time.
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I keep Wi-Fi routers secondary to the main (wired) network router to make sure the main router has the best overall throughput. I put a Wi-Fi router as an extension to the network. This works very well.
John, this is how the Ni works, it gets it's profile or provision from the router but is separate from the router itself. They do have router/wifi combos and i agree, these are for the smallest of branch offices, (IMHO), under 15 people.
I should have mentioned that many of these routers come with antivirus and antispam capabilities based on an add-on license. That's what I meant when I said "if you don't need antivirus". Really what I should have said is that it's less money without. I would NOT recommend doing this with a small router as the newer AV things can slow them down too much. For example, I changed out an SSG-5 for an SRX-240 for that reason. I have no experience using this capability on the RV0xx line. I liken this to what happens to a PC over the years. While nothing else has changed, the PC slows down because the AV software continues to evolve and eventually can bog things down.
I use an RV042G in my home office and get outstanding performance. I do NOT use it for anti spam or anti virus. Spam is handled elsewhere and my computers have anti virus.
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I have used the RV042 and RV082 routers in the past, and wasn't very impressed. But, that was back in the day when it was Linksys product. Have they gotten significantly better since then or is it still a Linksys product with the Cisco badge slapped on?
Where would you go to buy something like a Juniper Netscreen, or Fortinet or Watchguard products?
Where would you go to buy something like a Juniper Netscreen, or Fortinet or Watchguard products?
The newer Cisco ones are excellent. So is Juniper, of course.
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I don't get the sense that the Cisco RV0xx v03 is all that much different from the (Linksys) V01.
I've used them in failover and load sharing modes and recommend load sharing because the failover operation was flaky in the sense that if the Primary WAN shut off and the Secondary WAN took over then the device would not switch back to the Primary when it reappeared. Then the device remained on the Secondary forever until "kicked". But this may well be something you don't care about. Otherwise they seem pretty stable, etc. We rarely reboot any of them and more often reboots are part of a total system reboot and not targeted to these devices.
I've used them in failover and load sharing modes and recommend load sharing because the failover operation was flaky in the sense that if the Primary WAN shut off and the Secondary WAN took over then the device would not switch back to the Primary when it reappeared. Then the device remained on the Secondary forever until "kicked". But this may well be something you don't care about. Otherwise they seem pretty stable, etc. We rarely reboot any of them and more often reboots are part of a total system reboot and not targeted to these devices.
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Thank you for your help and opinions, everyone.
@Frosty555 - You are very welcome and I was happy to help.
Fortinet is decent... I know a lot of consultants that put them in and like them. They have a wide range of products allowing for pretty much any size business.
Watchguard has looked interesting, but I haven't used them.
These days, I'm using Untangle in either a VM or on a small device I build. Works great and it's FREE for the basic version (they even offer very low priority support for the free version and an active forum board to resolve issues). Many BASIC "advanced" features such as VPN, Spam filtering, IDS, IPS, Reporting, Firewall, web filtering, and other features. If you want more advanced (such as dual wan routing, better web filtering, etc, they offer annual, renewable packages for one, several, or all features, priced in user increments.