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Hi,

I’m looking for a router with VPN for a small business. At most, 2-3 people will connect at once, probably mostly just 1 person at a time.

I’m looking for reliability, good security and ease of use. All three are hard to find of course. I like OpenVPN as I find the client very reliable in OS X. Do people consider DD-WRT reliable enough for a business environment?

Also, if anyone has any standalone VPN solutions they can suggest please do so.

Suggestions and advice would be appreciated from people who have deployed similar devices in small business environments.

9 Spice ups
2

Lancom makes a great router for SMB’s. Very secure, and you can always get the lancom OS updates. I have a 1781A we have had here for quite a while, and we still get the OS updates. If the vpn Client Software is too expensive for you, then you can use vpn-shrew to connect, but for the best security I would stay with the lancom advanced vpn Client. It also has cool stuff like an APP for IOS to connect.

http://www.lancom-systems.de/produkte/standortvernetzung/zertifizierte-vpn-router/lancom-1781a-cc/ueberblick/

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I like WatchGuard. They have a small router/firewall that is easy to set up and low maintenance. When I was a consultant I set those up at a bunch of small businesses and had very few issues. For switches, cant go wrong with an unmanaged Dell or HP for a simple setup.

3 Spice ups
4

Draytek routers are really easy to configure. I have placed several Draytek 2760 routers and they haven’t failed me yet.

1 Spice up
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We use FortiGate 60D - fast, easy to deploy and comes with good price. FG is also UTM, so it can secure your network and endpoints. Fortinet also provides tools for easy monitoring and analyzing trafiic and logs - FortiCloud (that’s bundled with the license).

IMO that’s best option for SMB. We’ve been using it for 5+ years and I can say that’s one of best solution I met in my career :slight_smile: For network with <20 devices (including mobile devices, laptops and so on) it’s perfect.

@Fortinet

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Yep, same here. Drayteks have worked fine for me.

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Ubiquiti Edgerouter. 3 port model costs $100, 5 port with poe costs $200.
You get commercial grade router, full function firewall, with built-in vpn in a box the size of two cigarette packs.
Vpn is your choice of IPSec, ppptp, or my personal favourite OpenVPN.
Good web interface for monitoring and basic config, with CLI for more advanced configs.

As for real world use, I use a 5 port poe model for business lan, 30 clients, with 10 simultaneous vpn connections using RDP and voip all day long. I also have a second one at my home set up with a site-to-site vpn to the office.

Works brilliantly. Best value-for-money proposition I have struck. Significantly better than dd-wrt, which is not, IMHO, business grade.

@Ubiquiti_Inc

2 Spice ups
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Draytek working for me too

Nice dual wan load balancing feature set on some models.

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A commercial grade IPSEC VPN Router for 100 bucks??? Are you serious??? You got me, the lancom I suggested would run you about 600 bucks. I have heard a lot about ubiquiti on here. I just checked it out and it looks like they finally have a reseller here in Germany. Definitely going to have to check that out…

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@Adaministrator - ikr!! I bought two extras, just so I could have spares! I hope pricing in Germany is equivalent.

1 Spice up
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Hats off to ubiquiti. The prices are exactly the same as in the U.S. Usually prices are just 1:1 which makes it about 30-40% more expensive here.

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Another vote for Draytek here.

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You could use pfSense. It’s free and can be uploaded on almost anything. It will do a view different types of VPN. It includes OpenVPN which you could sync to your AD environment.

1 Spice up
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I ran DD-WRT for a long while and didn’t have any issues until the router hardware crapped out. Always good to have support to fall back on though, my vote would be with Watchguard.

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For this kind of situation I usually just build a small form factor computer with two NIC’s in it. Then I load debian without a GUI and install firehol which is a super easy way to configure iptables as a router. Then I install openvpn and anything else I want it to do. It’s about as configurable and customizable as you could possibly get and cheap! I’ve used both DD-WRT and Open-WRT. I though DD-WRT was really quick and dirty but lacked many of the features of Open-WRT which I found extremely slow. I keep trying other things and always seem to come back to just a basic linux router that I built myself.

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sonicwall TZ series.

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We use a HP Proliant 380 G3 running PFSense, It works for everything we need. (we have tons of HP garbage around, any old pc would work fine, at home I use a SuperMicro 1U) It is rock solid stable and has every feature you could want, and it is free.

2 Spice ups
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I’ll just leave this here, it’s free and more powerful than almost any SMB router.

1 Spice up
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My vote is for the Fortinet 60D as mentioned already. We have a 15-20 employee office and it has a Fortigate 100D which is over kill for that office but it got approved. :slight_smile: I have installed six fortigates (100, 200 and 1000) and the installation is very straight forward. And the KB articles and tech documentation on the website is outstanding. Also upgrading the firmware is simple as well. Oh yeah and UTM…amazing devices. Good Luck!

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Thanks for all the GREAT replies! I think I’m going to look at taking the Ubiquiti route. The price point is right for my clients, and it looks like you get a lot for your money.

I looked at the pfsense route, I’d just prefer a pre-made solution. (I saw the pfsense store, just easier to buy locally in Australia…)

Thanks again!