Project Router101

Project Overview

A "business grade" router is often the first project for most home-labbers. It's central to most tasks done within your lab. Having a solid router with the features and capabilities is key to a successful home lab.

Describe the project, what are the expected outcomes? Are there tangible benefits to completing this project? (Ex: Setting up Nagios allows you to monitor the health of various facets of your network) Are there common pitfalls with this project or generally things to watch out for?

Prerequisite Projects

• Setup a hypervisor 101 - If setting up a virtual router

Specialised Hardware

• A "whitebox" router platform like NetGate, Qotom can be used if you don't want to use an old desktop or run a virtual router

Projects built on this projects

• Almost all projects listed in this wiki rely on your router in some way
• Setup a router 201

Implementations

• pfSense (recommended)
  • Pros to pfSense
    • Free Open Source Software
    • Has all the features you might want
    • Huge community and lots of guides for available features
    • Very mature platform
  • Cons to pfSense
    • Available features can be overwhelming
    • Some features are more complex to setup
• Untangle
  • Pros to Untangle
    • Easier interface for some
  • Cons to Untangle
    • The simplicity of the UI sometimes hides or otherwise blocks more advanced features
    • User community is smaller so it can be more difficult to find resources
• Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
  • Pros to EdgeRouter X
    • Simple UI
    • Many advanced features
    • 5 Gigabit ports
  • Cons to EdgeRouter X
    • Need to buy the specific hardware, though it's affordable
    • The simplicity of the UI sometimes hides or otherwise blocks more advanced features
    • User community is smaller so it can be more difficult to find resources
• Sophos XG Home
  • Pros to Sophos XG
    • Simple UI
    • License with full features free for Home use
    • Many advanced features (Cluster, IPs, Websecurity, Firewall, Userportal, SSL/IPSec VPN, SSL/IPSec Point2Point VPN)
    • Can be installed as Physical or Virtual
    • Big community of IT-Professional and Home-Lab Users.
  • Cons to Sophos XG
    • Log File troubleshooting, could be integrated better in the UI.