diedrichg
Wizard
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2012
- Messages
- 1,319
I tried Sophos XG when v17 came out. It was way beyond my capabilities.
After a hiatus I then recently tried OPNsense because I was interested in the interface over pfSense's as well as their frequent update cycle. Ultimately, OPNsense was just a bit too cumbersome, required too much configuration, and frankly I couldn't get OpenVPN to pass the DNS correctly. So I looked into alternatives and came across Untangle, which I've only heard of but never looked into.
It was then a YouTube video review of Untangle NG Firewall by Tom at Lawrence Systems that sold it for me. I deployed the installation on my ancient AMD A8 3870K with 16GB DDR3 and came across an installation error that virtualization couldn't be found on the CPU, which it does have and is enabled in the BIOS. Anyways, I installed the virtualization package despite the warning and everything went fine. I then went into the webUI and, wow!
I LOVE Untangle! It's beautiful. It's powerful. It's stupid easy and perfect for someone who just wants a click-and-work firewall! Seriously, it's so easy to deploy, setup, and install the apps. Yes, you can use it for free, but I'll definitely be paying the $50/yr home license because it's that good and I'll gladly pay that much for such a good product.
The only thing that takes some time getting used to is where to find certain settings. I also had trouble figuring out how to pass a foreign port through my country blocks but that actually wasn't that hard once I learned the interface and how to manage blocking and forwarding.
The only thing that bugs the crap out if me is that when you set a static IP for a device on your LAN it doesn't move from one side to the other (indicating that a static IP was assigned) so you have to find out which clients haven't been assigned yet and you can't rename clients that have been assigned through DHCP.
Bottom line; try out Untangle, you'll love it!
After a hiatus I then recently tried OPNsense because I was interested in the interface over pfSense's as well as their frequent update cycle. Ultimately, OPNsense was just a bit too cumbersome, required too much configuration, and frankly I couldn't get OpenVPN to pass the DNS correctly. So I looked into alternatives and came across Untangle, which I've only heard of but never looked into.
It was then a YouTube video review of Untangle NG Firewall by Tom at Lawrence Systems that sold it for me. I deployed the installation on my ancient AMD A8 3870K with 16GB DDR3 and came across an installation error that virtualization couldn't be found on the CPU, which it does have and is enabled in the BIOS. Anyways, I installed the virtualization package despite the warning and everything went fine. I then went into the webUI and, wow!
I LOVE Untangle! It's beautiful. It's powerful. It's stupid easy and perfect for someone who just wants a click-and-work firewall! Seriously, it's so easy to deploy, setup, and install the apps. Yes, you can use it for free, but I'll definitely be paying the $50/yr home license because it's that good and I'll gladly pay that much for such a good product.
The only thing that takes some time getting used to is where to find certain settings. I also had trouble figuring out how to pass a foreign port through my country blocks but that actually wasn't that hard once I learned the interface and how to manage blocking and forwarding.
The only thing that bugs the crap out if me is that when you set a static IP for a device on your LAN it doesn't move from one side to the other (indicating that a static IP was assigned) so you have to find out which clients haven't been assigned yet and you can't rename clients that have been assigned through DHCP.
Bottom line; try out Untangle, you'll love it!
