High-bandwidth firewall

martixy

Member
Jan 16, 2011
93
6
71
Recently I've come to the conclusion that I may require a new firewall.

The running theory is that the current consumer run-of-the-mill one is ill-equipped to handle the high-bandwidth traffic I'm occasionally throwing at it these days.
So I'm looking for recommendations. Free preferably, but given enough incentive(which may happen one of these days) I may spring for something proprietary as well.

Which reminds me, I've also been thinking of swapping my router for something less cruddy, but that's a story for another time.

Oh, and I am aware of pfSense, but I have nothing to run it on ATM.
 
Last edited:

Carson Dyle

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2012
8,173
524
126
I've never run a software firewall on any of my PCs. They seem to only get in the way.

For a nice, high speed router/firewall, though, I recently got a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite (ERLite-3). So far, I'm loving it. It has no wifi, and no internal switch, but I have those on other equipment.
 

TheRyuu

Diamond Member
Dec 3, 2005
5,479
14
81
Recently I've come to the conclusion that I may require a new firewall.

The running theory is that the current consumer run-of-the-mill one is ill-equipped to handle the high-bandwidth traffic I'm occasionally throwing at it these days.
So I'm looking for recommendations. Free preferably, but given enough incentive(which may happen one of these days) I may spring for something proprietary as well.

What features are you looking for that the Windows built-in one can't handle?

Which reminds me, I've also been thinking of swapping my router for something less cruddy, but that's a story for another time.

My recommendation:
http://www.amazon.com/Mikrotik-Route...ds=routerboard
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
51,744
7,307
136
Oh, and I am aware of pfSense, but I have nothing to run it on ATM.

I like pfSense a lot. You can run it as a virtual machine if you don't have spare hardware. For end-user computers, I like Tinywall on Windows (same concept as ZoneAlarm, but without the bloat & using the Windows firewall as the core) and Little Snitch for Mac. Throw OpenDNS on for DNS & you're got a pretty tight little system :thumbsup:
 

martixy

Member
Jan 16, 2011
93
6
71
What features are you looking for that the Windows built-in one can't handle?



My recommendation:
http://www.amazon.com/Mikrotik-Route...ds=routerboard
Well, apart from the standard fare, I'd like to have:
Component control / Application protection
Attack detection
Interprocess Communication control

And while this router looks pretty damn nice, I don't think I'll be able to find it here.

@Kaido
Tinywall looks like a pretty solid choice. I will absolutely give that a try AT LEAST.
 

Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
10,371
762
126
Recently I've come to the conclusion that I may require a new firewall.

The running theory is that the current consumer run-of-the-mill one is ill-equipped to handle the high-bandwidth traffic I'm occasionally throwing at it these days.

What is your definition of high bandwidth?