SMB Router suggestions.

R

Rison

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Jun 20, 2011
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Hey all,

I now work for a small business who are the IT company for other small business' in a small-ish municipality.

Currently the company installs Juniper SSG5's in most SMBs in the area.. but we've come across a problem with the VPNs.
For a huge, multitude of reasons we need client to site IPsec VPN tunnels for remote users for Win7x64.. yeah - we have strange and crazy clients who run random db / custom software that they have to have their laptops as if they are on the internal network when they are at home / remote locations.

The problem is, the Junipers IPSec for clients is a PITA and you basically have to purchase a client license for $60 to get it to work.
We use whatever client that Juniper supports, which costs about $60 per client. Not cool for a 20-30 user business. We've tried OpenVPN with a whack of rulesets, and we've tried ShrewVPN to no avail.

So here's my question (read: monty ptyhon skit : GET ON WITH IT!)

What enterprise grade router would you guys recommend?
Needs: IPSec VPN, easy install for client (yes, this is screaming Cisco SMB 881 series here), wireless (ugh) with phone tech support and be incredibly stable. Costs are limited to around $1k.
We've debated Untangle and pfsense. pfsense is still on the table, but worried about their support system - has anyone had experience with them? 8am-8pm kind of sucks if things go down on the weekend and we're unable to recover.
I'm not too familiar with pfsense either, so it's going to be installed on a spare box tomorrow - but do they have client to site, clients? (or is this, see: shrewvpn..)

Anywho, i'm not a network administrator by any means, but thrown into the fire for recommendations. Any advice is appreciated. Any mention of Sonicwall, and i'll pretty much ignore what you say. :)
 
You'll often find IPSec VPN clients to be high maintenance.

SSL VPN is where it's at....easy and reliable. Set it up....and you don't have to revisit the remote workers machines to do support several times a year like you do with IPSec.

For SMB routers, edge devices, I've been turning more and more to UTM appliances at the edge, usually Untangle. For smaller setups we've been using Linksys/Cisco RV0 series..rock solid reliability and decent site to site VPN tunnels. However, its IPSec VPN client leaves something to be desired...buggy in my experience.

More towards your point...you mention 20-30 users...I'm assuming you mean remote users...for that many users I'd separate the edge router and VPN...and get a second appliance dedicated for doing the VPN. I've had great experiences with Junipers SA series SSL VPN appliances.
 
Hey Stonecat, thanks for the reply
I was looking at the Juniper SA700's, but they are a good $1k for the base unit + $700 for 10 users, so that is out of the ball park if we wanted say, 25 simultaneous users on the device.

I'm workin on the pfsense box as I type here, so hopefully something good will come of it. :)
 
PFSense does OpenVPN...which is SSL based..but it's still also client based. Well, it also does IPSec and PPTP. If you're willing to do OpenVPN...for an SMB router suggestion I'd step up to Untangle....which can benefit the office with added UTM features for protection against malware.
 
Try Astaro, its pfsense on steroids. I use both but have never called support so I can't vouch for that. I haven't set up VPN on Astaro yet but OpenVPN works great on pfsense. They both have virtual appliances for ESX.
 
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I'm setting up a Cisco RV082 with 12 IPsec clients using the greenbow VPN client software in the next two weeks. We use VPN extensively in the field. I had an older solution working in most locations, but am interested in seeing how well this solution works out.
"The greenbow" VPN software version 4.7 is quite good. The newer 5.0 is very buggy.

If this thread is still active I 'll update you all here in a week or two.
 
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RV220W is almost identical to the RV082 when you are comparing version 3 hardware. The RV220W has wireless. The RV082 gets more VPN connections.
 
shiznit said:
Try Astaro, its pfsense on steroids. I use both but have never called support so I can't vouch for that. I haven't set up VPN on Astaro yet but OpenVPN works great on pfsense. They both have virtual appliances for ESX.
Click to expand...

Astaro is another cool option.....they've been around a long time. Dunno if I'd call it pfsense on steroids, it's more of a long time proper UTM....more along the lines of Untangle. Except Astaro has been around for a long time, it's a well matured product.

For SMBs...I'm all about UTM appliances now, basic NAT routers are no longer sufficient IMO....we do UTMs as much as we can these days, and the positive impact of UTMs is very clearly evident with the reduction of malware issues we see at clients. Like night and day.
 
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