Router/Firewall/WiFi for Medium Sized Network (~30 wired, ~20 wifi) [closed]

Question

I'm looking for product recommendations for a wired router/firewall for a Medium sized company. We have a couple of 48 port GbE switches, so all I need is the router/firewall to connect to our transport (100Mbps ethernet). We have two or three consumer-level WiFi APs and are considering consolidating them into a different topology although that's neither here nor there.

Have used the NetGear Pro line in the past.

Required:

• DHCP/router for ~50 devices
• Basic firewall (nothing fancy, just provide some inbound attack protection)
• Can support up to 100Mbps to the WAN (we've got 80Mbps now, burstable to 100Mbps)

Nice to have:

• Supports teaming for failover
• WLAN built-in, or can operate within same vendor's WLAN ecosystem
• Expandable as our network continues to grow, or at least some sort of upgrade path to bigger networks

Answer 1

My favourite router is pfSense - it can be used for:

• DHCP
• Basic Firewall (as well as more detailed firewalling options) - the snort package may be desireable for extra protection

• 100Mb no problem, can even fit gig NIC's for more throughput to future proof against WAN upgrade

• Supports failover using CARP

• WLAN isn't brilliant, just add access points as needed
• If you use a reasonable box and decent NIC's, it will probably suit your needs well into the future.

It can do a whole heap more, but I thought I would stick to your requirements.

Only catch is that you need to find a pc to run it on. Where I last worked, we repurposed an old Dell Poweredge 2800 as it was going to be scrapped, and for the backup box I set up an old Dell Precision 370. I never had any problem with the boxes except myself a handful of user errors by myself - never needed to reboot them ever.

Size of these boxes may be undesireable, I personally would have preferred a 1U server, although some people use ALIX boards which are small and drain low power (but they also have puny CPU's that would have done what I needed for VPN encryption).