Recent content by ForkWNY
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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... -
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. -
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... -
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). -
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... -
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... -
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... -
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...- ForkWNY
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- Forum: Switches, NICs and cabling
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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...- ForkWNY
- Thread
- Replies: 8
- Forum: Switches, NICs and cabling
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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... -
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... -
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... -
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... -
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... -
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...