I mean you could, but why would you want to? when you finally get it configured the reward is worth the effort.
I had a some spare parts lying around and decided to put them to use. I really really wanted to try out one of the many UTMs available. The few that I had in mind were
ClearOS
Simplewall
OPNsense
and
Sophos XG
or Sophos UTM Home
Oh, and pfsense
I liked the dual antivirus engines of Sophos (Avira/Sophos) and so I went with that. After spending half a day installing Sophos UTM and Sophos XG multiple times trying to decide which one i liked more, I settled on UTM.
After the initial install, clients don't "see" the default gateway that is the firewall itself. I somehow managed to log into the damn interface after I corrected a subnet mask issue. The firewall was configured for a 255.255.255.0 subnet mask but Windows was reporting 255.255.0.0, and I was getting an APIPA address on all my Windows clients. Some other quirks were that the firewall gives itself an IP address/default gateway of 192.168.2.100 which is in the same subnet as the DHCP pool (192.168.2.1-254) So I changed the DHCP pool to 192.168.2.100-254.
But enough of that.....here's a screen shot of the mouth-watering dashboard after a whole day of blood, sweat, and tears.
Some features that this and other UTMs offer (for the average home user) is gateway antivirus, malicious URL blocking (web filtering), a full intrusion detection and prevention system (port scan/flood detection) and having SSL, IPSec, VPN servers hosted right on the firewall itself.
The interface is fantastic, with more eye candy than an internet infographic.
My system is pretty low end, but faster and has more memory than any router you can buy.
CASE: Rosewill SRM-01 ($30)
MOBO: open-box MSI A68HM-E33 V2 Realtek GBe(-$10 after rebate) yes, it was free, and then a $10 rebate on top of that with the infamous Microcenter motherboard+CPU combo deals
CPU: AMD A6 ‑7400K ($59)
RAM: 4Gb DDR3 ($30)
SSD: Silicon Power 120Gb SSD
Ethernet: Realtek GBe PCI-e
Router: TP-Link WDR 4300 Gigabit.
With DD-WRT installed and used as switch/wireless AP
I had a some spare parts lying around and decided to put them to use. I really really wanted to try out one of the many UTMs available. The few that I had in mind were
ClearOS
Simplewall
OPNsense
and
Sophos XG
or Sophos UTM Home
Oh, and pfsense
I liked the dual antivirus engines of Sophos (Avira/Sophos) and so I went with that. After spending half a day installing Sophos UTM and Sophos XG multiple times trying to decide which one i liked more, I settled on UTM.
After the initial install, clients don't "see" the default gateway that is the firewall itself. I somehow managed to log into the damn interface after I corrected a subnet mask issue. The firewall was configured for a 255.255.255.0 subnet mask but Windows was reporting 255.255.0.0, and I was getting an APIPA address on all my Windows clients. Some other quirks were that the firewall gives itself an IP address/default gateway of 192.168.2.100 which is in the same subnet as the DHCP pool (192.168.2.1-254) So I changed the DHCP pool to 192.168.2.100-254.
But enough of that.....here's a screen shot of the mouth-watering dashboard after a whole day of blood, sweat, and tears.
Some features that this and other UTMs offer (for the average home user) is gateway antivirus, malicious URL blocking (web filtering), a full intrusion detection and prevention system (port scan/flood detection) and having SSL, IPSec, VPN servers hosted right on the firewall itself.
The interface is fantastic, with more eye candy than an internet infographic.
My system is pretty low end, but faster and has more memory than any router you can buy.
CASE: Rosewill SRM-01 ($30)
MOBO: open-box MSI A68HM-E33 V2 Realtek GBe(-$10 after rebate) yes, it was free, and then a $10 rebate on top of that with the infamous Microcenter motherboard+CPU combo deals
CPU: AMD A6 ‑7400K ($59)
RAM: 4Gb DDR3 ($30)
SSD: Silicon Power 120Gb SSD
Ethernet: Realtek GBe PCI-e
Router: TP-Link WDR 4300 Gigabit.
With DD-WRT installed and used as switch/wireless AP