Recommend me a router for BT 20mb Leased Line

[bodminman]

Hi,

on Friday we are signing on the dotted line for a leased line connection to our school and would like some recommendations on what router we should be looking at.

I have a little experience of ISA but not enough me thinks to set one up from scratch!

Currently the only service onsite which requires access externally is the email (Currently RMs IMail) and for the time being there won't be anything additional. In the future we may be looking at Exchange OWA and ICA/RDP.

Thanks in antisipation!

[m25man]

How many clients do have?
What features do you need? PAT, NAT, IPS, DMZ etc..
What's your budget?

You could spend anything between a few hundred pounds and a few thousand!
The Drayteks will handle the basic requirements which is stopping the bad guys getting in,
DrayTek Vigor 2955 SSL VPN Firewall and Load Balancer
If you need deep packet inspection, IPS, or Content Filtering & UTM functions you could look at something like the Sonicwall/Smoothwall/Juniper solutions.
There is a plethora of vendors all wanting your cash.

Personally I'm a Sonicwall fan I bought an NSA240 with the total secure pack myself so that I could learn the OS functions Parrot Fashion and I love it.

As with most things IT, you get what you pay for.

[bodminman]

NAT, IPS and approx 150 clients.

Budget, well we have around £500.

As I've got a few months to go I am thinking of setting up a test machine to run Squid, Netfilter, SpamAssassin with Webmin.

Anyone doing something similar?

[j17sparky]

If you are going to be doing your own filtering anyhow what about running the likes of Endian/smoothwall/IPcop? They all do free editions so the cost would only be the price of the hardware - plus it kills 2 birds with one stone

[bodminman]

I've never done this DIY before so I'm not sure. I'm willing to get something setup to test but I would also like some recommendations just in case I bottle it!

[m25man]

That's not a huge budget, I'd go with the Draytek then. They are a really good box easy to set up and manage and simplify the whole installation.

[bodminman]

That's not a huge budget, I'd go with the Draytek then. They are a really good box easy to set up and manage and simplify the whole installation.

Just been looking at the SonicWall range and looking at some reviews. They look pretty good. Can I ask how much you paid for the 240 unit?

[psillars]

Hi,

I just did a google on the word SonicWALL and found a few online retailers selling SonicWALLs.

The NSA 240 looks like it starts at around £698 + Vat but there may be some other offers around.

I hope this helps

Paul