Review Suggestion: Sophos UTM

[bimmerdriver]

Since you've reviewed some alternative router firmware, why not review a software router, better yet, one that is free for home use? I was finding my Netgear WNDR3700v2 wireless router somewhat limited on features, so I decided to give something different a try. I switched it into AP mode and I'm using Sophos UTM Home Edition as my main router / gateway. I'm running it as a guest on a hyper-v server, but you can also run it directly on a PC. I would be interested to hear how you think it stacks up feature-wise with other routers.

Here is a link to the home edition.

PS. I have no affiliation whatsoever with Sophos.

 

[thiggins]

Anyone else have any experience with this product?

 

[bimmerdriver]

Sophos UTM was previously called Astaro ASG before Sophos bought Astaro. I'm pretty happy with it. I'm currently running v9, will probably give the v9.1 beta a try. I have it set up with an ipv6 tunnel from hurricane. Trying to get it connected with an openvpn server, but this is one problem area, as they have built a wall around the openvpn config file. As soon as I get a chance, I'll try and edit the config file via the back door. Considering it's free for home use, it's quite impressive. I'd be very interested to hear comparisons of this from users who have tried other software routers such as pfsense.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks, bimmer. I'm surprised YeOldeStoneCat hasn't chimed in. But, then again, he's an Untangle fan....

 

[coxhaus]

I wonder how it stacks up against Untangle? Untangle is the first UTM that I have run which has been maintenance free for a couple of years. I will take a look at your link.

 

[bimmerdriver]

Haven't been here for a while, but enjoyed reading the how-to articles using pfsense. I'm still using Sophos utm and it does a lot of the same things. I've been very happy with the performance and reliability. It's very solid. You should take a look at it.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Thanks, bimmer. I'm surprised YeOldeStoneCat hasn't chimed in. But, then again, he's an Untangle fan....

I just saw this Tim....(yeah I've been scarce)

Yes I've run "Astaro"...at home....ran it on both an old IBM Thinkpad laptop, and on a SuperMicro 1U box with a dual core Atom CPU and 2 gigs of RAM.

A somewhat "similar" product to Untangle...actually Astaro has been around for a long time..much longer than Untangle. It's a VERY matured product.

As you probably know, Sophos bought up Astaro a while ago, and that product has been rebadged as Sophos UTM.

Sophos is not the biggest AV brand around here in the States...but they've been around for quite some time, and we talked with some of their sales guys last spring when we were looking for e-mail filtering products for our e-mail services at our office...to filter e-mail for our clients Exchange servers. Good support and a very good product.

But back to the Sophos UTM...yeah it's a good product. Free for home users. Install it on your own hardware much like other *nix firewall distros. So rather standardized chipsets and better NICs are desired for optimal performance and stability.

While at it..quite a few other excellent "UTM" distros out there which I'm sure some home users and do-it-yourselfers would love to read articles on....Endian, ClearOS, SimpleWall....
Endian has been around for quite a while, it started out life as a refined product based on IPCop with the Copfilter add-on.
ClearOS is SWEET...it's like an open source version of Microsoft Small Business Server Premium.

 

[bimmerdriver]

Thanks for the comments. V9.2 is in beta, coming to a close. It's working really well. The only thing I wish they would put in is support for connection to a remote openvpn server / gateway. Unfortunately, it's not on the radar, so I'm thinking about putting another guest on the hyper-v server to run a light-weight *nix as a vpn client. Any suggestions for a good *nix distro for that?