I am going to intentionally exclude Unifi and Mikrotik along with the vendors like Cisco, Juniper, Aruba etc from this discussion as I don’t think they are relevant (especially since you can’t run them on your hardware).
- OPNsense: Considered the superior alternative to PFSense. Great firewall, routing capabilities, IDS and certificate authority, advanced features, can be a DNS server etc. Best option all around for x86, but BSD based - take note of available drivers. Don’t even think about running random WiFi antennas unless you confirm good support for them (use a distinct WAP).
- OpenWRT: built for consumer router + switch + WAP boxes on embedded hardware. Great OS and uses very little resources with many features, but doesn’t compete in features with OPNsense if you have x86.
- VyOS: Debian based router + firewall. Linux makes it easier for people to pick up the CLI but I’ve heard complaints about it being difficult to follow. Currently CLI only, at least without third-party solutions, but is powerful and competes directly with OPNsense for features for the most part. Edit: I made a mistake - LTS versions also have their source available for free, you’d just need to compile it with the instructions on their website. Seems to be stable.
- Debian + FRRouting + nftables + heavy SELinux for the paranoid/analogous alternatives on OpenBSD (the latter is considered more secure but YMMV, configuration plays a big part here).
- Freemium: Sophos free version for home use.
Which one of these do you run, and why? What have been your issues with one or the other, and what have you settled on? Any niche customisations that you might have made? I’m very interested to know!
Cheers
Edit: it would seem that OPNsense is a big winner in this space for stability. OpenWRT comes next because of it’s very light nature and ability to run on consumer routers.
I’ve run Opnsense for quite a few years now, haven’t really had any issues with it.
I’d like to try OpenWRT and move to a nice low power router, but figuring out what hardware is supported is hard, as just “it runs openwrt” isn’t good enough when hardware acceleration often doesn’t work and stuff like that. Overall just too confusing for me to bother with finding hardware that will handle at least 3 Gbps throughput.
VyOS looks interesting but CLI only sounds super rough, I don’t really understand how I would do stuff like see DNS blocklist stats and easily whitelist by clicking on a blocked host, or add a static IP by clicking on the MAC address and that sort of thing.
Honestly you can go buy some random device and it will probability be supported. For instance I bought a Linksys router from Walmart and it runs Openwrt fine.
Finding throughput data is difficult though, basically anything will support like 500Mbps, but hitting 1-2Gbps consistently with internet downloads or transfers crossing VLANs seems a lot tougher.
