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  1. ForkWNY

    Is this micro firewall appliance on Amazon TGTBT???

    It's legit...I had one of those "Qotom" devices from Amazon and it did just fine running the latest version of OPNsense. If you can find them for $133 that's a pretty solid deal. AliExpress typically has the lowest prices on these x86 router/firewall boxes, but they take a month or so to arrive...
  2. ForkWNY

    Dual WAN router for two ISPs

    Right...pfSense and OPNsense have a feature called "sticky connections" that allow web sessions to persist out the same WAN interface for a user-defined time period to get around that issue affecting some banking sites and apps.
  3. ForkWNY

    Dual WAN router for two ISPs

    I would not recommend load balancing dual WAN with ASUS. The firmware lacks configuration options that are 100% necessary for properly handling load balancing between multiple WANs. For example, you'll find that certain applications, notably streaming media, really need to be bound to one WAN...
  4. ForkWNY

    Pros/Cons of preloaded Netgate appliance vs. installing on own hardware?

    I wound up ordering one as well to test it...don't forget to clip the $32 coupon for the aluminum model on Amazon...brings the total price to about $80 after tax (depending on your State).
  5. ForkWNY

    Pros/Cons of preloaded Netgate appliance vs. installing on own hardware?

    Intel N5105-based mini PC's are priced very reasonably from a number of vendors, loaded up with 16GB of DDR4 RAM and 256GB+ of SSD storage. I've seen them priced lower in some cases than Pi 4b's (which are now difficult to find, and fetching prices well above their original $59 MSRP). Does...
  6. ForkWNY

    Router recommendation

    Agree with L&LD, no consumer (ASUS/d-link, you name it) would handle that...as an alternative to Netgate (which are beefy, yet also costly, business-capable network appliances), perhaps some of the more powerful mini-PC's with newer generation Intel i7+ or Ryzen 7+ CPUs and multiple 2.5Gbe NICs...
  7. ForkWNY

    Dual WAN router for two ISPs

    I'll vouch for x86 mini-PC mutli-WAN appliances (running pfSense or OPNsense) working very well for multi-WAN. That's what I run on my home network now, where I have 1Gbps fiber and 1Gbps cable both coming into the house, OPNsense handles the load balancing and failover perfectly. I would never...
  8. ForkWNY

    Outdoor PoE Equipment? Don't forget surge suppression...

    You just have to hope the surge is stopped quickly enough and those gas discharge tubes do their job...as well as the avalanche diodes clamping down, breaking the circuit promptly enough to prevent further damage. I've observed surge protectors do their job well, while others seemed to do very...
  9. ForkWNY

    Outdoor PoE Equipment? Don't forget surge suppression...

    Spring brings stormy weather, and it's around the corner. Not sure if others have posted about this, I didn't see much in the way regarding PoE surge protection in the forums, but can't hurt to have this info repeated nonetheless, especially because outdoor PoE devices are becoming more popular...
  10. ForkWNY

    TP-Link ER605

    Agree with the responses above...the ER605 is just fine as a standalone router, whether you manage it via an Omada controller or not is up to you. After having used Omada for the past couple of months, it's like powered windows and locks on a car, I won't be going back to individually-managed...
  11. ForkWNY

    TP-Link ER605 + ASUS GT-AC5300 - DUAL WAN

    Not the best screenshot, but shows 2 concurrent speedtests running against the same speedtest server on 2 separate WAN links. The 2 shades of red represent the concurrent downstream WAN tests over 2 ISP's, where the shade of blue on the bottom represents the combined LAN output (~1.60Gbps...the...
  12. ForkWNY

    TP-Link ER605 + ASUS GT-AC5300 - DUAL WAN

    Most get hung up with load balancing in OPNsense/pfSense here: Firewall > Settings > Advanced > Multi-WAN Shared forwarding is enabled by default, sticky connections is not enabled by default. There's a lot of confusion as to why this is the case (it's probably because most just want...
  13. ForkWNY

    TP-Link ER605 + ASUS GT-AC5300 - DUAL WAN

    If you set both WANs to the same Tier in the failover gateway group, the two links will be load balanced. If there's packet loss on either of the WAN interfaces, OPNsense will consider the link down and route all traffic out on the WAN that is up/online, unless you have firewall rules that state...
  14. ForkWNY

    TP-Link ER605 + ASUS GT-AC5300 - DUAL WAN

    So far my OPNsense box has been doing a great job of load balancing/failover across two 1Gb WANs. For the most part it has been seamless, nearly set-and-forget. The one minor issue I did notice was that sometimes Netflix would freak out when loading new shows, or if it was going from one...
  15. ForkWNY

    Guest network with VLAN -did i do it right?

    VLAN config is the way to go to truly segregate your network, and it's good for a number of reasons. However, most Wifi configs now allow for configuration of GUEST networks as a separate SSID, and you can simply tick a checkbox to block anything on the guest network from getting to any device...
  16. ForkWNY

    TP-Link ER605 + ASUS GT-AC5300 - DUAL WAN

    Nah the hardware was fine...it was capable of 1Gbps upstream, and I could get it to hit 900Mbps+ upstream using iPerf and linking two Gig laptops together with the ER605 in the middle. The ER605 is a great solution for most...I would not recommend it to anyone with a 1gb symmetrical connection...
  17. ForkWNY

    TP-Link ER605 + ASUS GT-AC5300 - DUAL WAN

    Here's a router comparison, Fios 1Gb symmetrical ISP - I have a speedtest script run off a Raspberry Pi midday and midnight every day. You can see the performance difference across the 3 routers, it says a lot about reliability...it's not fair to compare a $60 ER605 to devices that are 10x as...
  18. ForkWNY

    TP-Link ER605 + ASUS GT-AC5300 - DUAL WAN

    pfSense and OPNsense are both open source, GPL-licensed. As long as you're using them for personal/educational/etc. use, you don't need to pay anything for it. Netgate is a commercial product that uses pfSense as their firmware on their own routers. The benefit of Netgate is you get their...
  19. ForkWNY

    TP-Link ER605 + ASUS GT-AC5300 - DUAL WAN

    No doubt it's much faster/more powerful. While I won't bash the ER605 any further, it is a very nice router for the $$, 1Gb symmetrical seems to be beyond its capabilities. The x86 mini-PC is an amazing piece of hardware...I've only begun scratching the surface of what this thing can do.
  20. ForkWNY

    TP-Link ER605 + ASUS GT-AC5300 - DUAL WAN

    @Tech9 - just a FYI that I got the mini-PC running OPNsense up and running. Nearly every single speedtest now measures over 900Mbps upstream and downstream over Fios, whereas the ER605 had very spotty results. Day/night difference with performance, though I'll admit OPNsense was slightly more...
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