Well, I went back to Untangle, just can’t find any firewall on the market that I like. Been using Untangle for over 10 years now !
Picked up a Brand new Hp Dl20 Gen 10 box, with a Xeon 2224 with 16 gigs ram. At first the machine hated the m.2 slot, it ran fine had no issues but the fans would not ramp down, because not “100%” supported hp m.2 card. So I ditched the m.2 and bought a pair of 256gig sata drives ( cheap samsungs ) Installed them in Raid1 and off we go !
Id have to say, installing the AMSD driver on Debian10 was tricky but i got it working and installed & running.
So far the box is running stable & quiet, the odd Fan ramp up but its ok.
I think Untangle is a great firewall at $50 for home pro with the features, you can’t beat it. With the rig you have you won’t lose any speed. I have a z4 with a FIOS 500/500 connection and I lose a little speed with Web Filter, Web Cache, Ad Blocker, Virus Blocker and App Control active. I don’t have the nads to run v16 but WireGuard is something I’m waiting for.
Quick question, what draws you to Untangle and not pfSense? I’ve been on the fence for the past month going back and forth, I have one box running pfSense and another with Untangle. My goal is essentially separating my LAN from the wireless and IoT stuff. I currently have things setup with LAN having access to the Wireless network, but not the other way with WiFi accessing anything on the LAN. I’m still new at this, picked up a ton of tips from Tom’s YouTube how-to videos. So just looking for what others are doing and their prospective. Cheers
There are a lot of things i like about Untangle. I’ve tried pfsense and couldn’t wrap my head around it, way to many features and settings for so little gain ( IMO ) Doing simple things is overly complicated.
I have about 7 vlans at home here, my IOT one has one rule “OUT” to the world that’s it thats all it can do. I do monitor it and have a few app’s running on that vlan to protect it but the main rule is block . it can’t snoot or do anything, and the scope isn’t that big maybe 10 ips.
Been using untangle since 2010 and always keep going back to it.
I’ll name a few main features i like about Untangle.
Backups., they backup to the untangle.com/cmd portal and can be restore easily.
Management, you don’t need to open ports to the external world to gain access to untangle remotely.
Interface is simple & easy to use, do a task save done.
50$ a year for a home pro license is worth every cent.
The main page gives a very good detailed view of everything that is going on first glance.
Untangle has been our “go-to” firewall for businesses since…geeeze…back with version 5. ( can’t recall back when that was…2005 maybe?) Been a partner with them ever since, have sold/installed a lot of 'em.
Years ago I used to have a hobby…trying a different *nix powered firewall at about 1x a month. Used to use various small form factor business desktops computers at home to install them on…and run my home network on. I recall PFSense back with its first release. And IPCop, m0n0wall, Smoothwall, Endian, Copfilter (a UTM add on for IPCop), ClearOS, Astaro (since bought up by Sophos…and now it’s Sophos UTM), Zentyal, ClarkConnect…yeah lots of fun ones.
But outside of the hobby, chose Untangle for us to resell/install for our clients. Beats the heck out of Sonicwall, Watchguard, Fortinet, and all those “boxed retail” UTM firewalls for businesses.
Anyways…heck of a potent server you have there. We used to run it on full blown 1U rack mount servers at some really large clients. But these days, nice smaller 1U or even fanless mini desktop industrialized units are what we use (like Protectli…an i3 or i5 with 8 or even 16 gigs…overkilll…but cheap).
Lots of people try to compare to PFSense. We’ve done quite a few PF installs for clients also. I call it the “Ferrari of firewall distros”…wicked fast, lean 'n mean. But it’s not a UTM. Yes you can add a couple of almost quasi UTM-ish models…but, it’s not a full UTM like Untangle. Apples and Oranges. Each have their purpose that they excel at.
Shoot, the WireGuard app says 14 days free trial under my Home Pro license. That’s now 2 apps I wanted that I do not get. The jump in $$$ from a Home to a Complete license for a me as a home user is too much. This may change things.
OK yep looks like they added WireGuard to the exceptions list. That is disappointing for home users. And as far as I know Untangle didn’t have to do much besides make a UI for it, which would be similar to their other VPN UIs? It isn’t like what NetGate is doing to get WireGuard in PFSense, where they are funding a lot of the FreeBSD kernel work.
